Showdown Looms on Greek Debt Bomb and NATO War on Russia

The European Central Bank on Thursday accelerated the timetable for a showdown with Greece over the actual bankruptcy of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system. At the same time, NATO provocations in the Black Sea and the Baltics have put the danger of an out-of-control war in the heart of Eurasia on a similar fast-track. The two patterns are not unrelated, but are a reflection of the impulse, on the part of leading British factions, to provoke what they insanely believe could be a war, confined to the territory of Eurasia–targeted at the leading BRICS nations of Russia, China, and India.

At the meeting of the ECB governing board on Thursday, Mario Draghi rolled out the bank’s $1.2 trillion quantitative easing swindle, which will begin on Monday with the purchase of 60 billion euros in tarnished assets from the major European banks. The QE program excludes Greece and Cyprus, and the ECB board refused to allow Greece to print new government bonds to maintain the capitalization of the major Greek banks. While the Eurozone finance ministers agreed to a four-month standoff with Greece, the ECB is clearly going for a short-term showdown–hoping that Greece will cave in.

Lyndon LaRouche, on Thursday, emphasized that there is no way out for Greece, or for any country in Europe, so long as the mountain of unpayable gambling debt is kept on the books. So, this is a showdown in Europe, and the outcome will hit Wall Street immediately, as well. On Monday, the Eurozone finance ministers meet again to consider the Greek proposal for a four- month period, in which to work out the details of a debt conference, and an end to the genocidal austerity.

The showdown on the bankruptcy of the British trans-Atlantic system is driving the push for war. Four NATO war ships entered the Black Sea on Thursday for maneuvers. Russia announced it would be conducting air maneuvers in the same area, and 2,000 Russian troops are also engaged in training exercises near the Ukraine border.

The British House of Lords had released a new so-called comprehensive study of the Ukraine crisis, pinning all of the blame on Putin and Russia. The British, once again, are playing for a war against Russia, this time using the United States, under President Barack Obama, as the suckers to engage in a war of annihilation against Moscow.

The Nemtsov assassination is continuing to reverberate, but with more voices joining Lyndon LaRouche in condemning the assassination, as part of the ongoing “color revolution,” being engineered by the likes of Victoria Nuland, to overthrow Putin and throw Russia into chaos. A prominent Greek strategic analyst, Ilias Iliopoulos, has written that the assassination of Nemtsov was the work of the Western forces pushing the ouster of Putin, and he named ex-Obama Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, along with Victoria Nuland, as the likely architects of the operation.

The speaker of the Russian Duma, in an interview with Russian TV on Thursday, made clear that those in the West, who claim “Russia is isolated,” are disconnected from reality. Russia is a core player in the new, emerging BRICS alliance, which already represents 42 percent of the world population, and 27 percent of real global wealth. That is hardly “isolation.” Putin, in a mid-week address to leaders of the Russian Interior Ministry, made clear that Russia will repel the “color revolution” operations being run. In the same breath, he condemned the Nemtsov assassination as part of the assault on Russia.

As Lyndon LaRouche has repeatedly emphasized this week, these crisis conditions demand bold war-avoidance action. Obama and Nuland must be ousted from office now. Netanyahu and his Saudi alliance, for a Hundred Years’ religious war inside the Islamic world, must be exposed as the British population- reduction program that it is, and promptly crushed. The United States must be brought into the BRICS new paradigm. That process starts with the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, bankrupting Wall Street; the launching of a high-technology, capital-intensive infrastructure, and job-creation programs through large amounts of Federal credit; and the establishment of a Hamiltonian national bank to drive the process forward.

There are no gimmicks or tricks that are going to work. Only these measures can reliably avert a plunge into a war in Eurasia that will never be contained, but will lead, as Russian military officials have repeatedly warned, in recent days, to a full-scale thermonuclear war.