Category: Aggregated

At the Queen Elizabeth-led Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings (CHOGM) at Malta, convened yesterday, Canada’s new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has been set up as the spokesman to exert pressures to accept climate-change diktats scheduled to be adopted at the Nov. 30 to Dec. 11 UN Climate Change conference in Paris. CHOGM represents the heads of 53 nations formerly under British rule, although very few heads of government of these 53 nations have come to Malta.

Voicing its concerns over CHOGM’s push for a climate- change-related consensus at Malta, Indian officials argued that any ambitious statement emanating from the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) here should be tempered with realism, as the discussions in the run up to the COP21 at Paris have been complex and difficult and should not be overloaded at this stage, PTI reported.

Canadian TV’s Ottawa Bureau Chief, Robert Fife, said today, that Trudeau was expressly asked to attend the biennial meeting of the Commonwealth leaders by U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who wanted him to stress the importance of a climate-change agreement at the end of talks in Paris. CTV also reported Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion calling the three-day CHOGM summit a “training camp” for the United Nations climate-change conference.

CHOGM  has decided to set up a climate-change hub which would facilitate access to funds for small states like Malta. British Prime Minister David Cameron earmarked around £26 million for projects to help 25 small island states. Trudeau said his country will give C$2.65 billion over the next five years to help developing countries combat climate change, Times of Malta.com reported. The contribution is part of an agreement Canada made in 2009 to work with developed countries, to jointly provide $100 billion by 2020 from various sources.

Belgium remains on high-terror alert following the November 13 attacks in Paris, as a number of the perpetrators, including the “mastermind,” Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and current fugitive Salah Abdeslam, were citizens or residents of the country.

Earlier this week, Belgian socialist MP Dirk Van der Maelen, as well as the LaRouche-affiliated movement Agora Erasmus in Belgium, put the government on the spot: either you are against terrorism or you’re in favor of it. If you’re against it, you should review all economic and financial relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states which are promoting terrorism and radical forms of Islam such as Salafism and Wahhabism.

That message hit the highest levels of government. On Friday, the Flemish daily De Standaard reported that Belgian Finance Minister Johan Van Overtveldt suspended tax-convention negotiations between Belgium and Saudi Arabia. “In light of current events it seems appropriate to re-evaluate that convention on its desirability,” the newspaper quoted van Overtveldt’s cabinet as saying. The talks are delayed “till later.”

Sputnik International notes that “the decision comes after the Belgian opposition called on authorities to review the country’s relations with Saudi Arabia in light of Riyadh’s support of an “ultra-conservative” interpretation of Islam.

Friday morning, De Standaard reports the statements of another socialist MP, Yamila Idrissi, who said the government should end Saudi control over the Great Mosque of Brussels, “a propagation center of extremist Islam in Brussels, Belgium, and Europe.”

As underscored by an article on the website of Agora Erasmus posted early this week, already in 2012, under pressure from the Belgian state security, Saudi Arabia was forced to bring back to Saudi Arabia a rector of the Brussels Mosque, due to his inflammatory speeches and preaching. The Mosque is, and has been for decades, a notorious center used by diplomats and imams to spread feudal Wahhabism.

In 1967, King Baudouin of Belgium gave a 99-year contract to the Saudis to own and run the Mosque. That contract should immediately be scrapped, and the Mosque should become a “Modern center for a New Islam,” said MP Idrissi Friday. 

French President Francois Hollande and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Moscow, Friday, following Hollande’s meetings with his German, Italian, and American counterparts in the days before. For Hollande, the contrast is dramatic between his time at the White House on Tuesday, Nov. 24—the day the Turks downed the Russian fighterjet—with Obama, who denounced Russia as an isolated loser, and Hollande’s time with Putin Friday, where the two of them made joint commitments to defeat terrorism.

Recall Obama’s exact, wild-man words on Nov. 24 at the Obama-Hollande press briefing: “Russia right now is a coalition of two—Iran and Russia—supporting Assad…Russia is an outlier…”

In Moscow yesterday, Putin and Hollande, after their meeting, gave statements, then took reporters’ questions.

Putin said that they had “agreed to step up our joint efforts on the anti-terrorist track, to improve the exchange of operational information in the fight against terrorism and establish constructive work between our military experts in order to avoid overlapping incidents and to focus our efforts on ensuring that our work in fighting terror is more effective, avoiding any strikes against territories and armed forces that are themselves fighting terrorists.” He also expressed confidence that a political settlement could be found in Syria after terrorism is eradicated.

Hollande stressed that unity is essential but not enough. There must also be action. Nations must take responsibility, as France is doing with the deployment of the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier. He also emphasized the importance of a transition process in Syria, the emphasis of which is largely in line with the Vienna document, but he added that “it goes without saying that Assad does not have any role to play in the future of his country.” Despite that, in order for the transiton to succeed, “it is imperative that Russia should play the main, one of the main, roles in this process.” As for the specifics of Franco-Russian cooperation, Hollande said that they had agreed on three points: 1) stepped-up intelligence cooperation; 2) coordinating intensified strikes against ISIS; and, 3) concentrating those strikes on ISIS and terrorist groups.

In response to questions, Putin once again went hard after the matter of oil smuggling from ISIS-controlled territory into Turkey. He pointed out that at the G20 summit in Turkey just a few days before the shoot-down, he had shown to other G20 leaders the photographs taken from Russian aircraft of lines of oil trucks extending as far as the horizon.

“Oil is being supplied from territories controlled by terrorists in Syria at an industrial scale. It comes from these territories, not from somewhere else,” Putin said. “We can see from above where these trucks are heading. They are driving towards Turkey, day and night. I can presume that Turkey’s top leaders are unaware of this. This would be hard to believe, but it is possible theoretically. However, this doesn’t mean that the Turkish authorities shouldn’t cut off these illegal transactions.” And if Turkey is destroying all of this oil, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims, “we don’t see any smoke or flames” from it.

Putin also raised the point: what use is the Oct. 20 Memo of Understanding between Russia and the United States, if the U.S. does not preclude such incidents at the Nov. 24 strike on the Russian jet?

“We exchange information with them, but now we’re very worried about the nature of this exchange and the results of this cooperation,” he said. “Look, we informed our American partners in advance when our pilots were going into action and where, in what air corridors. The American side, which leads the coalition, to which Turkey is also a party, knew about the location and time of our operation. And this is precisely where we were hit.” The question that arises, therefore, is “why did we pass this information to the Americans? Either they are not in control of what their allies are doing, or they hand out this information every which way without understanding the implications.”

Lyndon H. LaRouche today reiterated, with added urgency, his previous warning that U.S. President Barack Obama is on a determined path toward nuclear war and must be removed from office immediately. The warning comes in response to the escalation of Obama’s ongoing nuclear confrontation policy towards Russia as exemplified by the shooting down of a Russian jet over Syria by NATO member and U.S. ally Turkey. The Turkish action could only have occurred with the blessing of Obama. LaRouche’s warnings are underscored by assessments of security experts in the U.S. Yet, there is a foolish reluctance among these experts to demand the one remedy that can pull the world back from the threat of nuclear war—removing Obama from control of the U.S. nuclear forces, by impeachment or the activation of the 25th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The latest warning about possible imminent nuclear war was just published in Politico Magazine by a former nuclear-missile launch officer, Bruce G. Blair, titled, “Could U.S.-Russia Tensions Go Nuclear?” Blair points to the Obama Administration’s launch on warning policy and the shortening of the response time for making a decision about launching nuclear forces. He states that this puts the world on a nuclear hair-trigger more dangerous than during the Cold War.

Blair warns,

In that context, Obama’s deployment of U.S. and allied forces against Russia can only be seen as an escalation towards nuclear conflict. For example, Blair cites the deployment of U.S. Aegis destroyers in the Black Sea armed with cruise missiles that could strike Moscow in minutes. Or the deployment of U.S. strategic bombers flying toward Russia. This, in turn, forces Russia into an escalatory response.

Blair asks, “Do U.S. leaders understand that the Russians may fear a decapitation threat is emerging, and that this threat may be the underlying driver raising the stakes for Russia to the level of an existential threat warranting preparations for the use of nuclear weapons? I doubt they do.”

The frightening conclusion that Blair does not draw, however, is that U.S. President Barack Obama does know, and intends, to create an existential crisis for Russia, and thus, bring the world to the brink of thermonuclear war. Since the beginning of Barack Obama’s Presidency, LaRouche has warned that Obama is a narcissistic killer. Everything that Obama has done since has proven LaRouche right. One need only look at Obama’s assumption of the role of global executioner, presiding over the regular Tuesday sessions where he personally decides the kill lists for U.S. drone attacks. Or, his confrontational behavior towards Russia in the wake of the Turkish downing of the Russian fighter jet.

There is no time or room for a long debate on this matter. Obama’s nuclear war provocation poses a threat to the existence of the human race. He must be removed now. A single Congressman can initiate impeachment proceedings. Responsible officials within the Presidency can initiate the 25th amendment on the basis that a President intending to provoke nuclear war is no longer fit for office. The American people must now heed LaRouche’s warning. Remove Obama Now!