Author: Spencer

Secretary of State John Kerry reported yesterday that he and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov “have been instructed” by their presidents to try to work out a common strategy on Syria, and to that end, he and Lavrov will meet today. The instructions came at yesterday’s meeting between Obama and Putin, a meeting which Kerry described today as “genuinely constructive, very civil,” and “very candid.”

Kerry’s next statements made clear that with “Obama and The Girls” (as retired Col. Pat Lang is wont to say about Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Valerie Jarrett, et al.) still in power, a common strategy is unlikely. Russia, Syria, Iran, and “we and our coalition friends” could end the violence in a very short period of time, Kerry said—if Bashir al-Assad leaves. “You cannot bring peace in Syria as long as Assad is, in fact, there…. It all depends on one man, and Russia and Iran should not be so stubborn here that they tie this whole thing up simply because of one person.”

Kerry’s “one man,” unfortunately, was not a reference to Obama.

Foreign Minister Lavrov, for his part, told RT from New York City, that the two presidents

Putin made the same point about the Baghdad information center’s purpose in his September 28 press conference with Russian journalists, and that it was open to all. He pointed to the utter failure of Obama’s current “coalition” (never mentioning Obama by name):

Putin cited Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Jordan as possible regional candidates to join the international “anti-Hitler coalition” he proposed in his UNGA speech.

Asked why he made the comparison with the Nazis, Putin said:

Among several meetings Putin held on the sidelines of the UNGA in his one-day visit to New York, were ones with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and Iraqi President Haider al-Abadi. 

The 90-minute meeting between Presidents Obama and Putin, finally held Monday, was no one-on-one, but a formal affair of five or six officials of each nation—Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State John Kerry among them—flanking their Presidents facing each other on opposite sides of a long table.

Obama said nothing about the meeting afterwards, leaving it to an unnamed “senior administration official” to give a brief report later that evening that the meeting had been “productive” and “focused,” dealing principally with Ukraine and Syria. The unnamed official did, however, report that U.S.-Russia military coordination on Syrian operations, which the Obama White House had earlier shot down, will be established. As National Public Radio summarized the official’s report, the two presidents “did agree to have their militaries maintain communication in order to ‘deconflict'” operations in Syria.

Putin Doesn’t Minsk Words

Unlike the White House, the Kremlin posted pictures of the meeting, and President Putin held a press conference with Russian journalists at the United Nations afterwards. Putin, too, characterized the meeting as “very constructive, businesslike, and surprisingly very frank,” and expressed his view that it was very useful, but he was blunt about the continuing dangerous state of Russian-U.S. relations, and who is responsible for that state:

Putin emphasized the importance of the Minsk process on Ukraine; as for Syria, he made clear that Obama’s regime change policy, and insistence that Bashir al-Assad must be removed from office before all else, remains a central difference.

Putin reiterated to the Russian journalists that Russia will not yield on the principle of national sovereignty. He reported that he had discussed with Obama the fact that U.S., French, and Australian bombings inside Syria are illegal, as there is neither a UN Security Council resolution nor an invitation from the legitimate government backing them up. As for Assad, Putin said:

In the new leadership dynamic shown at the UN General Assembly, led by President Putin, President Xi, and other BRICS nations and collaborators, President Obama and his controllers have been dramatically outflanked and upstaged. The danger is, Obama remains in office. This defines the continuing task of Americans, as reiterated for all to see at a lively rally on Monday at the UN Plaza, held by Manhattan Project activists, with the clear message on banners such as this one: “Obama: Help World Peace: Resign Today!”

A photo of this placard, and another one, “Putin Stops Obama’s Holocaust; Throw Obama Out,” were sent around the world by the Sputnik news service over the last 48 hours. Sputnik- America covered former Senator Mike Gravel yesterday, under the headline, “Obama Should Join Putin in Unified Effort in Syria—Former U.S. Senator.”

Regarding Syria, the one immediate and concrete outcome of Monday evening’s 90-minute meeting between Putin and Obama, was the confirmation that U.S. and Russian military would be in communication for purposes of “deconfliction” of their military operations. This is ironic, since that very process was initiated Sept. 18 in a phone call between Russian Defense Minister Shoigu with U.S. Defense Secretary Carter, but shortly thereafter, officially denied by the Obama Administration. This is typical, and dangerous. Kerry and Lavrov will also meet on Wednesday to further explore Russian diplomatic initiatives. According to one American source, Putin dominated the discussion with Obama with concrete proposals for a genuine UN-mandated war to wipe out the Islamic State, and came away with the sense that, for the first time, Obama had been forced to listen.

But, as Lyndon LaRouche reiterated on Tuesday, there is no safety until Obama is removed from office altogether.

After the Putin-Obama meeting, Putin immediately conducted a lengthy, open dialogue with Russian journalists (available in full on the Kremlin website). But Obama left the meeting, saying nothing.

Putin reiterated to the reporters his formulations given early that day, to the General Assembly: the U.S., French and Australian bombings in Syria are illegal, without UN Security Council mandate or invitation of the Syrian government. We must instead act in strict “compliance with the norms of international law…”

Putin is calling for collaboration on Syria against terrorism, and a meeting of all concerned nations in October. There have been a number of Russian initiatives on this, prior to this week’s UN session. The joint intelligence center in Baghdad (Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria) was launched and will be up and running in October; there is a parallel bilateral channel between Russia and Israel; and finally, Russia, China, and India met awhile ago in Beijing, to set in motion, under the framework of the UN Security Council, comprehensive collaboration on international terrorism.

Amidst these important actions comes a special strategic initiative against the green fascists. Pres. Putin, in his Sept. 28 address to the UN General Assembly, made the offer that Russia would co-sponsor with the United Nations a world conference on the “biosphere and technosphere” to take up new, advanced technologies that can deal with resource depletion and improve the environment of the planet. In addition, Indian Prime Minister Modi has resumed the attack on the developed sector’s schemes, taken up at Copenhagen, warning that India will not accept any so-called climate change agreements that shut developing sector nations out of real scientifically driven economic growth. In a one-on-one meeting with Modi, President Obama reportedly went into a quiet rage over Modi’s resistance and will dispatch U.S. officials to New Delhi to squeeze India prior to the December meeting in Paris.

We can no longer stand the state of the world.Vladimir Putin at the United Nations

Inside, outside, and at great distance from the United Nations on Manhattan’s East Side today, it was obvious that Russian President Vladimir Putin is changing the strategic shape of world events, and has substantial support among Americans as well for a real international coalition to defeat terrorism.

Putin’s UN speech defending the Franklin Roosevelt-originated Charter of that organization, was blunt and effective. He said that rapidly spreading terrorism, impoverishment, and loss of respect for life has been generated across the Mideast, North Africa and South Asia by regime change wars, or “wars for democracy,” which are in violation of that UN Charter and of international law, and that this devastation would spread until it were stopped. “We can no longer stand the state of the world.”

A “phenomenally successful” all-day rally outside the UN by 40 LaRouchePAC activists found extraordinary receptivity to its banner message: “Obama: Help World Peace. Resign.” The completely phony war Obama’s “60-nation coalition” is supposedly fighting against the ISIS terrorists has descended to a couple of airstrikes a day while captured U.S. weapons and U.S. “allies'” support for ISIS/al-Qaeda has swelled the terrorists’ fighting ranks to well over 30,000 in Syria and Iraq alone.

As if “out of nowhere,” however, a new coalition, actually to fight the terrorists, is rapidly emerging around Putin’s Russian initiative, backed by China, into Syria. Change is sweeping across Europe, as well as the Middle East, in regard to the acceptance of this initiative.

EIR Founding Editor Lyndon LaRouche was asked by media to comment on Putin’s 2-hour CBS interview. In discussion with the LaRouchePAC National Policy Committee Monday, LaRouche said that a fundamental change in policy is occurring, which is revolutionary. Wall Street is also collapsing. The world will soon represent something different for mankind, he said. And this, in a period when there is no longer a belief in the discovery of fundamentally new principles — physical, economic, or political!

Putin, he said, has just demonstrated the principle of the flank — against a crucial point of complete failure of Obama’s policies, and has thrown the Obama White House into confusion and anger.

China’s President Xi, meanwhile, announced still another $100 billion commitment, through the UN, to international infrastructure development. The “win-win,” or Confucian economic development policy of China is integral to the global shift in policy underway.

Obama’s most effective contribution to it? Resign.

I’m interested, tell me more

Today, Monday, September 28, marks a critical day in history, as Russian President Vladimir Putin comes to Manhattan to present his flanking maneuver against President Obama and his controllers in London and Wall Street. It is a showdown between creativity and insanity, between global development and global disintegration, between peace and war. Putin has already begun deploying extensive military hardware in Syria, at the request of the legitimate Syrian government under President Assad. As he told Charlie Rose in an interview to be broadcast in parts between Sunday night and Tuesday, he is committed to defending that legitimate government, since “any actions to the contrary” would create a disaster “which you can witness now” in Libya. He pointed out that this deployment was entirely according to international law, unlike that of President Obama, whose “provision of military support to illegal structures runs counter to the principles of modern international law and the United Nations Charter.”

There is panic in the White House, as Obama prepares to meet privately with Putin after they both speak at the General Assembly today. To reject Putin’s proposal for an international coalition of nations to protect the sovereign state of Syria, and the world, from the barbarous ISIS, will expose Obama as an overt supporter of precisely those terrorist networks—just as Gen. Michael Flynn, the former head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, accused Obama on July 31 on Al Jazeera of “willfully” backing al-Qaeda to achieve regime change in Libya and Iraq.

Tass reported on Sunday that already Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Russia have established a center in Baghdad for coordinating intelligence and operations against ISIS, to be run by representatives of the General Staffs of those nations. Will Obama oppose this effort?

President Xi Jinping sent further shock waves through the United Nations on Saturday, presenting Chinese plans for yet more great development projects around the world, and severely criticizing the existing policies of giving aid only to those countries which obediently follow the orders of the Western powers. China, he said, will put “justice over interests” in its development projects.

And the third leader of the Russia-China-India triangle, which is leading the BRICS nations in creating a new paradigm of peace through development, blew a hole in the plans of the green fascist agenda for using the Global Warming hoax to shut down development worldwide. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that there was a “trust deficit” with the developed countries who are using the climate issue to keep developing countries from improving the living standards of their people under the pretext of controlling carbon emissions. Alleviating poverty, he said, comes before carbon limits. It was India and China which led the successful rejection of mandatory carbon caps which spoiled the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change conference, and it is likely that the same thing is in store for “COP 21,” the Paris Climate Conference in December.

EIR’s new Special Report, ‘Global Warming’ Scare Is Population Reduction, Not Science, needs to be read and distributed to ensure that outcome.

Lyndon LaRouche was asked on Saturday, during a conference in Manhattan, how to approach organizing people in a moment of supreme danger like today. He responded in part:

On Sept. 23, in an article, “U.S. Stonewalls Putin’s Anti-Terror Push at the United Nations,” Foreign Policy pointed out that the Obama administration has killed a Russian proposal seeking “agreement on a UN Security Council statement promoting a broad-based counter-terrorism fight.”  This occurred a week before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the UNGA.  “One of the major concerns about the Russian-backed UN statement, according to Western diplomats speaking to Foreign Policy, was that Putin would use it as ammunition in his widely anticipated speech before the General Assembly on Sept. 28,” the article said.

The Foreign Policy article noted that the U.S. rejection followed weeks of closed-door negotiations involving the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The article said:

The article also pointed out that the Russian diplomats have spent the past month trying to put together a statement for the Security Council that would make clear that “Moscow’s jets, airbases, and drones [are] in Syria as part of a well-intentioned plan to bring stability to a strife-torn region and push back against the Islamic State.”  It also said that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov plans to convene a high-level meeting of the UN Security Council on Sept. 30.

In what might be a surprise for Spiegel readers, but not for EIR readers, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated at the EU summit on Sep 23:  “We have to speak with many actors. This includes Assad, but others as well,” Merkel was speaking at a press conference after an EU summit on the migration crisis sparked by the Syrian war, France 24 reported today.  “Not only with the United States of America, Russia, but with important regional partners, Iran, and Sunni countries such as Saudi Arabia,” Merkel added.  It is significant that Merkel mentioned Iran, a key nation undoubtedly seeking stability in Syria.

“It was only a short remark, but it confirms a coming diplomatic shift in the search for solutions to the war in Syria,” commented the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.  Both parties in Merkel’s coalition immediately signaled strong support for her.  The leader of the CDU Bundestag faction, Volker Kauder, said “maybe we should have spoken with Assad earlier.” And SPD faction leader Thomas Oppermann said: “We must talk also with Assad,” because we should talk with everybody who can help to achieve peace.

Also noteworthy is the statement of former Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs Juergen Chrobog, who said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk on Sept. 23, that the West needs Russia in the Middle East.  A solution without Assad is not possible, Chrobog said.  “We need the existing structures to achieve victory over ISIS.  Russia wants to keep the system; if they want to keep Assad in the long term is another question,” Chrobog said in that interview.

In what might be a surprise for Spiegel readers, but not for EIR readers, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated at the EU summit on Sep 23:  “We have to speak with many actors. This includes Assad, but others as well,” Merkel was speaking at a press conference after an EU summit on the migration crisis sparked by the Syrian war, France 24 reported today.  “Not only with the United States of America, Russia, but with important regional partners, Iran, and Sunni countries such as Saudi Arabia,” Merkel added.  It is significant that Merkel mentioned Iran, a key nation undoubtedly seeking stability in Syria.

“It was only a short remark, but it confirms a coming diplomatic shift in the search for solutions to the war in Syria,” commented the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.  Both parties in Merkel’s coalition immediately signaled strong support for her.  The leader of the CDU Bundestag faction, Volker Kauder, said “maybe we should have spoken with Assad earlier.” And SPD faction leader Thomas Oppermann said: “We must talk also with Assad,” because we should talk with everybody who can help to achieve peace.

Also noteworthy is the statement of former Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs Juergen Chrobog, who said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk on Sept. 23, that the West needs Russia in the Middle East.  A solution without Assad is not possible, Chrobog said.  “We need the existing structures to achieve victory over ISIS.  Russia wants to keep the system; if they want to keep Assad in the long term is another question,” Chrobog said in that interview.

Lyndon LaRouche said yesterday that we must use the United Nations General Assembly to return the US to its Constitution. That is, we must use the kaleidoscopic changes—for the better—in the policies of, and relationships among nations, which were triggered by Vladimir Putin’s surprise flanking move into Syria, to shut down Wall Street and throw Barack Obama out of office. Since Putin’s surprise move, the German government has made an about-face on the issue of the refugees thronging Europe. Chancellor Merkel decided to move to welcome the refugees and get them education and jobs, instead of trying to throw them out.

But LaRouche’s analysis implied that the German policy reversal would not be limited to the refugee issue,— that it would be far broader. And that has already proven true. Yesterday, just one day after a telephone conversation with Obama, Chancellor Merkel openly defied his policy, to announce at a press conference that the Syria crisis must be negotiated with Bashar Assad, and also with Russia and Iran. Today, the parliamentary leaders of the two German government coalition partners, the CDU and the SPD, both publicly backed her up.

Then, under extreme pressure, Obama was forced today to agree to a Monday meeting with Russia’s President Putin,— one which will be very risky for Obama, because Putin sees through him and holds all the cards.

But remember LaRouche’s stress on the point that Obama will not just go quietly,— on the contrary, his impulse will be to start a war rather than admit that his time is finally up. For example, when Obama authorized US Secretary of Defense Carter to talk for the first time with his Russian counterpart Shoigu on Sept 18, it was announced that the purpose was “deconfliction,”— to try to insure that US and Russian forces would not inadvertently begin to shoot at each other in Syria. Not so fast! On Sept 22, obviously after an intervention by Obama, the Pentagon said that Carter does NOT plan to discuss deconfliction until Russia alters its support for Syria’s elected President, Bashar Assad!

The naive would say that Obama values regime-change over the lives of American servicemen, but LaRouche has observed more accurately that Obama simply loves to kill, and yearns to kill on a much bigger scale now that he is cornered,— all the way to thermonuclear war. In a similar Obama move, Foreign Policy magazine reports that the U.S. has secretly vetoed a Russian UN Security Council resolution calling for a broader, and effective coalition against ISIS, even after the Russians included changes which satisfied other countries.

If, after almost two terms of Obama, some of our people no longer recognize him for the killer he is, this is due, not to Obama’s changing for the better, but to the degeneration our whole culture has suffered under his misrule. Obama is a mass-murderer like his Indonesian stepfather Lolo Soetoro. This latest round of degeneration under Goofy Bush and then the even-worse Obama, should remind us of an earlier round, which began with Ronald Reagan’s attempted assassination by a George H.W. Bush associate shortly after his inauguration, and ended with the humiliation and degradation of Bill Clinton shortly before the end of his second term.

Americans who reached adulthood before or during the post-JFK assassination 1960s, vividly remember the total makeover of our country by the rock-drug-sex counterculture. But far fewer recognize this subsequent round of degeneration.

Within this, LaRouche has emphasized the decay of the United States Senate, which has been left with no intellectual or moral depth.

The larger context for this round of decay has been the overall decay of the Twentieth Century, preceded by Chancellor Bismarck’s ouster by the British Crown in 1890, immediately followed by the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. McKinley had a world peace policy,— a harmony of nations policy like that of China today, like FDR’s plan for the United Nations, and what Lyndon LaRouche presented in his Manhattan Dialog of Sept 19. McKinley’s Presidency should be viewed as a continuation of Ulysses Grant’s military leadership, and Grant’s Presidency and post-Presidency. Grant in turn was a continuation of Lincoln.

It is well-known who killed McKinley; it was the same force which killed Lincoln, and the same which contrived to have Bismarck fired.

Now, more than a century later, we are privileged to be in the position we are,— a position earned by Lyndon and Helga LaRouche’s efforts and those who have helped them. We are privileged to be in position to restore the U.S. Constitution by shutting down Wall Street, and turning Obama out of office,— aided by the Manhattan proceedings of the United Nations General Assembly.

Michael Kofman, of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, in a lengthy analysis published on the blog War on the Rocks, characterizes the Russian move in Syria as a “flanking maneuver, leveraging military and diplomatic power,” intended to force the US to change course. Kofman writes:

“When the United States cut a deal with Turkey in late July to establish a no-fly zone, using Incirlik air base to conduct strikes in Northern Syria, Russia probably viewed it with deep suspicion…Moscow remembers what happened during the 2011 intervention in Libya, which it views as a demonstration of how American no-fly zones can become regime-change zones.”

Kofman does not expect Russia to join the military campaign alongside Assad’s forces, however (this remains to be seen).

The White House seems to have been caught “blind-sided” by the Russian deployment, Kofman writes, and he notes that the US has already agreed to military-to-military discussions and that Russia is pushing for an Obama-Putin meeting in New York. Even if that doesn’t happen,

On Sept. 20, the German news agency DPA reported that for the first time, German Typhoon Eurofighters are patrolling the airspace of the Baltic nations with wartime ammunition loads. Gen. Karl Müllner, Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe, told the press, “This is not a means for escalation. It is only a means to be able to meet each other at the same level.” Müllner said that it is necessary to “motivate the pilots.”

However, Müllner indirectly admitted that this is an escalation, because he said that until now, German Eurofighters had carried out their missions without being armed, in order to help “de-escalation.” The Luftwaffe is deploying from airbases in two of the Baltic nations, none of whose air forces have their own fighter capabilities.

The Bundestag deputy faction leader of the Linke, Sahra Wagenknecht, attacked the decision, telling DPA: “These are highly dangerous war games, which increase the danger of war for the whole of Europe…Anyone who sends fully armed German Eurofighters to Eastern Europe has apparently lost his mind. The government should immediately stop this insanity.”

Reminder: Gen. Karl Müllner was declared persona non grata on a black list of European officials published by the Russian government last June.

Müllner is known for his push to transform the Bundeswehr into a high-tech military for global war, with drone capability playing a central role. 

A Tuesday report on Frontal21, a TV news magazine on the German second TV channel (ZDF), raised the issue of the new tactical nuclear weapons to be stationed in Germany. It is the first time that a prime-time broadcast has addressed the issue of the danger posed by the U.S. policy of nuclear rearmament in Europe. The broadcast has already prompted a statement by the Kremlin and might mobilize public opinion in Germany.

Frontal21 sounded the alarm: In an official Pentagon paper, it is reported that German Tornado aircraft at the Büchel air base will begin to be “integrated” with the new B61 guided nuclear bombs in the third quarter of 2015. The new bombs will replace the old B61 bombs which are still there, but they represent a new capability for tactical nuclear weapons. That is, nuclear rearmament has already begun.

(NB: “Integration” does not mean that bombs are mounted on the planes: It means that planes are being adapted to be equipped with the new bombs. This is the beginning of a procedure in which will see, sometime down the line, the bombs being delivered.)

The broadcast confronted Angela Merkel in a press conference, asking two questions (in the reverse order): “Does the government support nuclear rearmament here in Germany?”

Merkel: “We will talk with U.S.A. about it. Maybe the Defense Ministry has already started, I don’t know. I will inform myself and at the appropriate time we will give you the information.”

ZDF also asked Merkel why she broke the government coalition agreement in 2009, when the CDU and FDP had agreed to force the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from the Büchel base.

Merkel: “My position in the 2009 coalition agreement was always such, that we should consider the consequences. We must see that if nuclear weapons are stationed in other places and there are none in Germany, then one should ask: Does this better serve security and balance?”

Merkel’s answer covers the fact, revealed by Frontal21, that she double-crossed her coalition partners. In November 2009, she met with security advisors of the U.S. ambassador at the U.S. Embassy. After the meeting, a dispatch was sent to Washington: Merkel does not want withdrawal of nuclear weapons.  “The agreement on the withdrawal of nuclear weapons was forced on the Chancellor’s office by [then] Foreign Minister Westerwelle … it makes no sense to unilaterally withdraw the 20 tactical nuclear weapons.”

Another focus of the TV report was the so-called  “Nuclear Sharing,” a NATO practice by which German Tornados flown by German pilots will be equipped with the B61 bombs and will be ordered to participate in an attack.

Former West German Defense Undersecretary Willy Wimmer recounts how he was involved in the last Wintex-Cimex exercise before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and at one point he was supposed to push the button that would have sent nuclear bombers to annihilate Dresden and Potsdam, then in East Germany. He consulted with the Chancellor and refused to do it, breaking the exercise.

Today, under Nuclear Sharing, German pilots might be asked to drop the new B61 bombs.

A peace activist living near the Büchel base, where the old bombs are stationed and the new bombs will be stationed, is quoted saying: “One could presume that the old B61 bombs would never be dropped, because they should work as deterrent. But the new weapons, as planned, they are built so that one can use them. And this for me makes the danger of a nuclear war much bigger.”

Frontal21 described the new B61 accurately as new weapons. This is therefore a breach of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. They interview a spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, who says: “We are worried that states which do not possess nuclear weapons, train for the use of such weapons, and this in the framework of the NATO practice of so-called Nuclear Sharing. This is a violation of Articles 1 and 2 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

Yesterday, the Kremlin issued a response: Spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Sputnik as saying,

The full transcript of the show, (in German), can be found here.