Category: Aggregated

News posts aggregated from alternative news sources.

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After dropping by 5% yesterday, the euro today fell another half percent in trading against the dollar, bringing it to 1.18 to the dollar — a nine year low. Nervous chatter is filling the pages of the financial media, about how the euro could even drop to parity with the dollar, and that the only hope for survival is for ECB president Mario Draghi to really let loose with quantitative easing at their next meeting on Jan. 22 — three days before the looming Greek elections.

“I’d say there’s a good chance it gets there [euro-dollar parity] before the [U.S.] election next November (2016),”

Marc Chandler, chief foreign exchange strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman, told CNBC.

“We know the Fed’s going to be raising rates sooner or later, and the ECB is going to be easing sooner or later. I just see a steady grind lower.”

As the euro was tanking, German Chancellor Angela Merkel travelled to London for six hours of meetings with Prime Minister David Cameron — appropriately enough, in a museum. Purportedly they were discussing the future of the United Kingdom in the EU, but it’s a good bet that the Greek crisis was actually foremost on their agenda.

Iceland, meanwhile, announced that it is planning to formally withdraw its application for EU membership. As Nigel Farage, head of the British UKIP party, stated:

“This move by Icelandic authorities and the increasing Mediterranean opposition to the EU shows that the idea of the inevitability of EU integration has been smashed. More and more people throughout Europe either no longer wish to join the EU or, as in Greece, to leave the euro currency all together.”

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Wednesday morning, at 11:26 am, three hooded individuals dressed in black and armed with Kalashnikovs and a rocket launcher, forced their way into the building of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, in downtown Paris and proceeded to carry out a five-minute shoot-out, killing 12 people, among which were two policemen deployed to intervene. Among the dead, a large part of the editorial board of this very popular weekly in France, gathered for their weekly editorial meeting. These include several of their star journalists and talented caricaturists, well-known to the French public as Charb, Cabu, Wolinski, and Tignous, plus left-wing economist Bernard Maris, a member of the Bank of France board, who is also part of the magazine’s editorial board.

As in other recent terror incidents in France, a policeman and several journalists who survived the attack report that the “terrorists” called themselves al-Qaeda affiliates, and shouted “Allahu Akbar” and “the Prophet will be avenged.” Reportedly they spoke French as their mother tongue.

While much more intelligence needs to be gathered, a first evaluation is that we are witnessing a full-fledged attempt to plunge Europe into a chaos scenario, pitting sections of the population against one another — pro-immigration against anti-immigration; pro-Muslim vs. anti-Muslim — at a time where they should, on the contrary, unite to face the major strategic problems of the time, the financial crash and the danger of war.

The so-called “Islamic” attack against Charlie Hebdo comes just four days after the attacks against three mosques in a Sweden, where the xenophobic Party of Democracy has doubled its strength since 2010. In the Netherlands, partisans of Geert Wilders of the Party of Liberty, wrote in their blogs their full support for those actions in Sweden, and said they would do the same in the Netherlands. The attack in France comes also at a moment when pro- and anti-immigration demonstrations in Germany are mobilizing thousands of people every Monday, under the leadership of PEGIDA (European Patriots against Islamization of the West), with 18,000 in Dresden alone on Jan. 5th!

Charlie Hebdo itself has been playing with this explosive fire for some time. In 2006, it was they who published the insulting Mohammed caricatures, after Denmark’s Jyllands Posten and the French daily France Soir. At that time, CounterPunch, a U.S.-based left-wing magazine, reported that neo-con Daniel Pipes, founder of the Middle East Forum, was the one who furnished the cartoons to Jyllands Posten. At that time Geert Wilders had declared that the Koran was the same thing as Mein Kampf. When he was taken to court for that, the Middle East Forum announced proudly that they were financing Wilders’ legal defense. Furthermore, Robert Spencer, a friend of Pipes, founded Jihad Watch, and this whole operation at that time was coordinated through the Middle East Media Research Institute, MEMRI, a neo-con outfit funded by the Randolph Foundation, and the CFR, where one finds Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Bernard Lewis, Irving Kristol of PNAC, etc.

This time again, Charlie Hebdo was about to proceed to another provocation. The cover story of their new issue was on Michel Houellebecq, a professional “provocateur” who just published a novel Soumission (Submission). The scenario of the book is that in 2025, a French presidential election pits Marine Le Pen against a Muslim candidate who has the backing of the right-wing UMP, the Socialist Party, and other mainstream parties. He actually wins and runs a good policy overall, including peace and economic development, except that all the women have to veil themselves, stop working, etc.!

All the actors of this tragedy have obviously been profiled with a lot of make-up to create a certain appearance of reality. The specific aim of this operation is not yet clear. In various statements, LaRouche associate Jacques Cheminade noted that “this is a terrorist attack against France,” he called for “national solidarity” to deal with the crisis, and said that the real enemy is “financial power”. He also noted that the attack has been carried out by “professionals”. In a weak statement, given in front of the Charlie Hebdo offices, French President François Hollande did call for “national unity” and for France to respond with unity to this attack.

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The need for the immediate release of the redacted 28 pages on the funding of 9/11, from the Congressional Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September of 2001, was the subject of a high-powered press conference on Capitol Hill Wednesday, January 7th. The event was sponsored by Congressmen Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-MA), who on Jan. 6 reintroduced their resolution demanding that President Obama declassify the pages, which were first classified by President George W. Bush. It is now before the Congress as H Res 14.

The featured speaker was former U.S. Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), who co-chaired the Inquiry and has fought for the last 12 years for the pages’ release.

Joining Jones, Lynch, and Graham on the podium were family members of 9/11 victims: Terry Strada, co-chair of the 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism; Sylvia Carver, sister of a 9/11 victim at the Pentagon; and Abraham Scott, husband of a 9/11 victim at the Pentagon. They all spoke powerfully about the long-overdue need for full disclosure, truth and justice for the survivors and victims and the American people.

The fact that a major terrorist attack, purportedly by Muslim extremists, had occurred in Paris the same day, gave a new urgency to the demands of the participants—as both Rep. Jones and Sen. Graham prominently pointed out.

Devastating Consequences

In his remarks, Sen. Graham outlined three devastating consequences of the failure to release the 28 pages: 1) denial of the truth; 2) denial of justice; and 3) a weakening of the national security of the United States. Sen. Graham demanded that President Obama live up to the “Lincolnesque standard,” whereby President Lincoln made every message sent in to the State Department during the Civil War a matter of public record. After the war, the U.S. government pursued this, holding the British government responsible for aiding and abetting the Confederacy. Ultimately, damages were paid to the U.S. for this perfidy.

Sen. Graham explained:

“Again, an example from the Civil War: The British had signed a neutrality agreement with the United States that they would not be involved in the Civil War. It was found out, subsequently, that in fact, their shipyards had been building military vessels for the Confederacy. After the war ended, the United States didn’t forget; it did not walk away from the negative effects of Britain’s perfidy. Rather, it pursued it, and finally, secured a recognition of what the British had done, and some compensation for the consequences of their actions. What a difference between the way this country saw itself as a prideful defender of justice for its citizens, and what we are experiencing today.”

Graham concluded with the following remarks:

“I’m going to make the case today, that there’s a threat to national security by non-disclosure, and we saw another chapter of that, today, in Paris. Here are some facts: The Saudis know what they did. They are not persons who are unaware of the consequences of their government’s actions. Second, the Saudis know that we know what they did! Somebody in the Federal government has read these 28 pages, someone in the Federal government has read all the other documents that have been covered up so far. And the Saudis know that.

“What would you think the Saudis’ position would be, if they knew what they had done, they knew that the United States knew what they had done, and they also observe that the United States had taken a position of either passivity, or actual hostility to letting those facts be known? What would the Saudi government do in that circumstance, which is precisely where they have been, for more than a decade?

“Well, one, they have continued, maybe accelerated their support for one of the most extreme forms of Islam, Wahhabism, throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East. And second, they have supported their religious fervor, with financial and other forms of support, of the institutions which were going to carry out those extreme forms of Islam. Those institutions have included mosques, madrassas, and military. Al-Qaeda was a creature of Saudi Arabia; the regional groups such as al-Shabaab have been largely creatures of Saudi Arabia; and now, ISIS is the latest creature!

“Yes, I hope and I trust that the United States will crush ISIS, but if we think that is the definition of victory, we are being very naive! ISIS is a consequence, not a cause—it is a consequence of the spread of extremism, largely by Saudi Arabia, and if it is crushed, there will be another institution established, financed, supported, to carry on the cause.

“So the consequences of our passivity to Saudi Arabia, have been that we have tolerated this succession of institutions, violent, extreme, extremely hurtful to the region of the Middle East, and a threat to the world, as we saw this morning in Paris.

“So I conclude by saying, this is a very important issue. It may seem stale to some, but it is as current as the headlines that we will read today. It is an issue that goes to the core of the United States’ contract with its people, that the people would give the government the credibility and support to govern; the government would give the people the information upon which they can make good judgments, as to the appropriateness of governmental action. It’s as fundamental as justice to our people, who have suffered so, by this evil union of extremism and a very powerful nation-state. And it is the security of the people of the United States of America.

“So, I again thank the Congressmen for their leadership. I hope that they will soon be joined by a rising tide of other members of Congress who recognize the importance of this issue. And then, finally, that the President of the United States will declare that he is going to adopt the Lincolnesque standard of full disclosure, and rely on the intelligence and judgment and patriotism of the American people to decide what the appropriate course of action should be.”

The Senate Must Move

While every speaker demanded the President act now, Rep. Jones took special aim at the U.S. Senate, insisting that the Senators had to move immediately to introduce a companion resolution demanding declassification. His words, and those of Graham and Strada, will be resonating loudly in the Capitol in the days to come. He said:

“This resolution that we have put in to call on the President, to do what is right for the American people and the 9/11 families. Senator Graham being here is just absolutely, just absolutely what we need to get the Senate to join us with a companion resolution, in the Senate, and to hold a news conference, and let’s put the pressure on the President.

“I do not know why, after I read these 28 pages, why there’s anyone who is reluctant to release the 28 pages. Steven Lynch and I—and I have a copy of this letter if you want it before you leave today—wrote the President in April, asking him to declassify the information. He’s told the families on two separate occasions, I will declassify the 28 pages. That’s been in the press!

“We wrote him a letter in April, asking him to please declassify the information. [As of t]oday, we have not received a response. We have called the White House numerous times. They’ve been responsive to this point: ‘We’re working on a response. We’ve got to let different agencies look at the response.’

“It is time that the Senate joined the House, and joined the wishes of the American people, and the wishes of the 9/11 families.”

The press conference was well-attended, with reporters and/or camera crews from CNN, Fox News, US News and World Report, Newsweek, Daily Beast, the New York Times, ABC, NBC, Huffington Post, National Review, and several 9/11 related websites including 28pages.org and hr428.org.

The full video is available at larouchepac.com.

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