Author: Alicia

Lyndon LaRouche today issued an emergency call for the immediate instituting of Glass Steagall full bank separation worldwide—starting in the United States. 
 

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This is the text of a presentation by Helga Zepp-LaRouche to the 2015 Silk-Road International Academic Conference—How to Establish Silk-Road Studies as an Independent Discipline of Research—in Gyeongju, South Korea, the ancient capital of Korea, on Aug. 21. The two-day conference had speakers from several dozen nations, with 58 presentations in all. It was sponsored by the Silk-Road Universities Network (SUN), being formally established with this conference, and based at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul.

“Future Vision of the Silk Road, A New Era of Mankind Where We Become Truly Human”

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

When we are talking about the New Silk Road as a vision for the future, we should see it as a synonym not only for a new just economic order, and emphatically as the basis for a peace order for the 21st century, based on completely different economic and scientific principles than the previous system of globalization, but also for a new paradigm concerning the identity of the human species as the only creative species known so far in the universe.

Concerning the first aspect, in respect to the new economic system, tremendous progress has been made with the recent BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization summits. In these meetings the integration of Eurasian Economic Union and the Silk Road Economic Belt Policy, as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization transport system were agreed upon, which will bring tremendous benefits to all peoples of Eurasia. Together with a new banking system, such as the AIIB, NDB, SCO Bank, SAARC Bank, New Silk Road Fund, Maritime Silk Road Fund, and CRA, all devoted to investments in the real economy and to fight off speculation, a completely new economic and financial order has gotten well underway, which in terms of human and natural resources and potential represent the locomotive of the future world economy.

Both President Putin, as well as President Xi Jinping, have emphasized, that while the BRICS are an organization of its own, they are open to collaboration with all other nations, including the United States, and European and Asian countries, President Xi Jinping has called this an all-inclusive win-win policy, in which all participating nations will enjoy mutual benefits. President Putin has reiterated that openness. The concept of the New Silk Road is therefore the most important strategic initiative, because it is the only available policy on the table to overcome the idea of geopolitics, which was the basis of the two World Wars in the 20th century. The prospect that nations, or a group of nations, would have legitimate geopolitical interests which would pit them against each other, must be replaced with the idea, that there is a higher level of reason, on which historical, ethnic, or other conflicts disappear. Mankind must be defined in this way for the first time in its history by the common aims of the human species.

This is not some vision for the far distant future, but it is the indispensable basis for an immediate intervention into the strategic situation today. Because there is the acute danger of a blowout of the transatlantic financial system, much more dangerous than the collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG in September 2008, and directly related to that, the danger of the escalation of the confrontation between NATO and Russia and China into what could become a global thermonuclear war.

“Doomsday clock for global market crash strikes one minute to midnight as central banks lose control,” was one headline in the British Daily Telegraph on August 18th, being symptomatic of a general recognition among financial analysts that there are today all the markers of the situation before the crash in September 2008, but that the too-big-to-fail banks are an average of 40% larger today, their derivative exposure is around 80% bigger, and the so-called tool box of the central banks is empty, since the interest rates are already at about zero percent and quantitative easing has been going on for many years, without getting the real economy restarted.

It is that pending systemic collapse of the transatlantic financial system, which is the acute basis for the danger, that the West will indeed step into the much discussed Thucydides trap right now, resulting out of the same geopolitical reasons, described by the authors of the geopolitical doctrine, Mackinder and Milner, before World War I. That same impulse governs very much those who wishfully call Russia only a regional power, which is ludicrous in light of Russia’s upgraded strategic nuclear capacities, or those who see in the rise of China something which must be contained.

The European Leadership Network, ELN, a thinktank consisting of former European and Russian defense ministers, just issued a stern warning, that the presently ongoing maneuvers of NATO and Russia are making a war in Europe more likely. Russia prepares for a war against NATO, and NATO prepares for a confrontation against Russia, the study writes. Such a war however, would not be limited to Europe, it lies in the nature of nuclear weapons, that once they are used, it will become a global thermonuclear war, which would in all likelihood lead to the annihilation of the human species.

In order to prevent that, it is urgent that the New Silk Road perspective be put even more energetically on the international agenda as a war avoidance policy.

The Schiller Institute presented last year a 370-Page scientific study with the title, The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land Bridge, which is the outline for an infrastructural integration of all continents, through a comprehensive system of fast train systems, highways, waterways, tunnels, and bridges as the arteries for development corridors. This comprehensive plan for the reconstruction of the world economy would provide enormous advantages for each participating country, enabling every part of the planet to participate in a win-win perspective.

This will be the way to bring to the landlocked areas of the planet the same advantages which previously only characterized areas located at oceans or rivers. This infrastructure will not only be the precondition for the development of industry and agriculture, but especially for the increase of the productivity of the respective populations. As the opening up of previously undeveloped areas progresses, and the industrialization intensifies, the speed and connectivity of transport becomes more important, and therefore the advantages of fast train systems over land become more significant than the cheaper transport by ships. Rather than transporting crude raw materials over many weeks over the oceans, where nothing is happening with them, in industrial centers with a highly differentiated division of labor and complex subsequent processing, time is of the essence.

One big area of the planet, where a solution urgently must be found, is obviously Southwest Asia and large parts of northern and central Africa. These large regions have been almost totally destroyed through wars, which were motivated by lies, and where the so-called war on terrorism has generated more terrorists with each bomb, drone, or killing. If the entire region from the Caucasus to the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, as well as the just mentioned parts of Africa, which literally have been bombed back to the Stone Age, should cease to be breeding grounds for ever more barbaric forms of terrorism, there must be a real development perspective.

Right now a refugee crisis is erupting from both Southwest Asia as well as Central and North Africa, of a dimension not seen since the end of World War II from Eastern into Western Europe. Then, 12 million people fled. Today according to UN figures, there are 60 million people on the march, most of them being harbored in poor, completely overstretched neighboring countries, with a very large portion trying to somehow get into Europe. There, many of the communities are already overstrained, and in the short term, social explosions and xenophobic backlashes are threatening the stability of the societies.

Especially in light of the recent revelations of the former U.S. DIA director, General Michael Flynn, concerning the emergence of ISIS, it is urgent that a root cause analysis concerning the refugee crisis be conducted. But then a profound cure for the problem has to be offered.

Already, in 2012, we presented, at a conference of the Schiller Institute in Frankfurt, a comprehensive plan for the development of this region as a whole. Only if all big neighbors, namely Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, and hopefully some European nations, such as Germany, France, and Italy, and hopefully the United States, agree, together with the BRICS, to extend the New Silk Road development perspective into Southwest Asia and Africa, is there the possibility, that the vision of a better future will convince especially the young men, that it is better to study to become a scientist or engineer and raise a family, rather than joining ever new jihadist groups. The perspective of a higher level of reason, embedded in the concept of the New Silk Road, the idea of peace through development, is the only way that the deep and bitter hostilities between the different ethnic and religious groupings can be overcome.

What is needed is an integrated development program, including a war against the desert with the development of huge new water sources, infrastructure, industry, agriculture, new smart cities, and science and research centers. If all the countries which are presently threatened by the terrorism emanating from that region, would collaborate in this development, the danger could be overcome. Likewise, rather than upgrading the defenses with Frontex and gun boats against streams of hundreds of thousands and potentially millions of refugees, who are fleeing from war, hunger and disease, taking a 50% risk of death by trying to cross the Mediterranean, would it not make more sense to develop these regions, since people rather like to stay in their home countries, than go into a horribly uncertain future? We have to make up our minds, where that part of the world should be in 50 or a 100 years from now; in a miserable dark age at best, or in modern times with a decent living for everybody.

Due to climate change, caused primarily by solar and galactic influences on planet Earth, the belt of deserts, ranging from the Atlantic cost of Africa all the way through the Sahara and Sahel, the Arabian peninsula, the Near and Middle East to China, is expanding presently in a similar fashion as the desert in the Southwest of the United States, and parts of Central and South America. The obvious answer to this problem is the creation of large amounts of fresh water trough a variety of methods, such as desalination of large amounts of ocean water through nuclear energy, continental water diversification and management projects, weather modification, and ionization of atmospheric moisture.

In several countries, atmospheric ionization systems have been successfully used to increase precipitation, and in this way affect the associated weather processes. Successful application of this method, which imitates processes occurring naturally in our solar system and galaxy, has been tested over three decades. With international cooperation concerning the further development of these technologies, the desertification of the mentioned regions of the world could be fought back in a completely new way: by the management of the water resources of the atmosphere!

Joint space research and travel is one of the foremost areas which constitute the future common aims of mankind. It will lead to revolutionary and necessary insights into our Solar System and galaxy. It is existential in order to protect mankind from dangers from space, such as asteroids, meteoroids, and comets, and it will be absolutely essential to define practically limitless new resources, such as for example the mining of Helium 3 on the moon as a fuel for a future fusion economy on Earth. If one considers the enormous progress mankind has made scientifically and technologically, it is obvious that space science is presently still in its very first baby shoes.

At the recent BRICS Youth Summit meeting of youth ministers in Kazan, Russia, on July 8-9, the participants signed a memorandum of understanding, which urged the BRICS member-nations to set up a joint space station, as well as to commit to the creation of a system of research institutions, the development of technology parks, and the organization of exhibitions on research-related subjects, according to a news item issued on the Russian BRICS website. The MOU document said: Working together on a space station for exploring outer space and carrying out manned programs could become a symbol of the new world order based on BRICS values.

While the concept of the New Silk Road becoming the World Land Bridge completes the era of the infrastructural development of the planet Earth, the extension of the New Silk Road into space represents the comprehension of our planet as part of our galaxy and will enable us to understand the galactic processes of which we are a part.

The beauty of our world is, that it has many rich cultures, which have contributed to the universal history of the human species. The ancient Silk Road did not only lead to an exchange of goods, such as silk, porcelain, glass, and spices, but it made possible the exchange of the most advanced technologies of that time, leading to the improvement of the living standard of all participating countries. With that came an exchange of cultures, philosophies, and new ideas, bringing human civilization forward.

The New Silk Road will make it possible that each culture of the planet can contribute its best and most noble expression in the areas of classical music, poetry, the visual arts, philosophy, and science. There will be an exchange of the high phases of each culture and civilization, young and old people will study the Greek classical period, Confucianism, the Gupta period, the Abbasid era, the Andalusian renaissance, the Joseon [or Chosun] period, the golden Italian renaissance, the German classics, to only name a few. By learning to know the best of each other’s culture, a deep understanding and even a love of the other cultures will develop, and in this way prejudices, chauvinism, and backwardness will be replaced by the spirit of a new renaissance, which will build on the knowledge of the old cultures, but will enlarge and enrich that wealth to the creation of new works of art in all fields.

The New Silk Road will open up a completely new paradigm for mankind, one in which that quality which differentiates human beings from all other species, its creative power of reason, will become the normal outlook. What was characteristic in past history only for exceptional individuals, the great discoverers, scientists, composers, and poets, will become the more natural condition for more and more people, especially when each child will have access to a universal education that emphasizes these treasures. This new renaissance will be the demonstration of the theory of the Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky, that in the evolution of the universe, the noösphere will increasingly influence and dominate the biosphere. The human species will develop its identity as the truly creative species.

So, we as humanity have reached the most important crossroads of our entire history. Either we can consciously organize our affairs based on the new paradigm which the New Silk Road represents, and deliberately create a new era in human history, or we may have the same fate as the dinosaurs. I would hope very much, that this conference and the New Silk Road study center will send a powerful message to the world to this effect. Thank you very much. 

Executive Intelligence Review magazine’s Michael Billington chaired—on Helga Zepp LaRouche’s behalf—a panel on “Concepts and Significance of the Silk-Road,” which included both Helga’s presentation and his own. The two-day conference had speakers from several dozen nations, with 58 presentations in all. It was sponsored by the Silk-Road Universities Network (SUN), being formally established with this conference, and based at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul.

Peace Through Development — The Unity of East and West

by Michael O. Billington

My associate Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, warned in her presentation to this conference that the world is threatened with global war, even thermonuclear war, for no legitimate reason. She addressed the New Silk Road initiative and the recent creation of new international financial institutions associated with the BRICS, the SCO and others, aimed at facilitating large-scale infrastructure projects around the world, as the necessary precondition for cooperation among all the world’s nations, including the western nations, towards meeting the common aims of mankind.

But we are living through perhaps the greatest crisis of the global financial system in modern history, with the trans-Atlantic financial system experiencing repeated convulsions, while governments choose to bail out huge quantities of speculative debt while implementing greater and greater levels of austerity on their populations, rather than reorganizing that debt in the manner carried out by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, writing off the worthless speculative portion of that debt and directing new federal credit into real physical development and employment.

Many of these western leaders look at the development of the Silk Road and the new financial institutions centered in Asia not as an opportunity for cooperation, but as a threat to the West’s access to the raw materials and labor power in the developing sector of the world, without providing the basic infrastructure required by these nations in return, as the Silk Road process does. This is the underlying conflict which is fueling the drive for war, which must be overcome.

Pope Paul VI, in his 1967 Encyclical, Populorum Progressio, Development of Peoples, stated that “the new name for peace is development.” In fact this is not really so new. Gottfried Leibniz, the great 17th and 18th Century philosopher and statesman who is properly considered the founder of the science of physical economy, in his journal Novissima Sinica, News from China, reporting to the European people the extraordinary philosophic and social traditions and the economic developments taking place in China at that time, which were being conveyed to him by the Jesuit missionaries in China, said the following:

Is this not a perfect reflection of the noble purpose of the Silk Road today?

You can compare that to the British Empire apologist Rudyard Kipling, who famously said that “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” I would argue that this is not an observation, but a statement of policy intent, to keep the world divided.

In America, the concept of the “common aims of mankind” was the bedrock of our best leaders, who were unfortunately few and far between.  Alexander Hamilton, our first Treasury Secretary, created national banking institutions not unlike the AIIB and the BRICS New Development Bank, based on extending federal credit for “internal improvements,” the term at that time for infrastructure. The great Lafayette called America the “beacon of hope and the temple of liberty” for all mankind. In the time of Lincoln, while he was building the trans-continental railroad, linking the Atlantic and the Pacific by rail, just as the Eurasian Landbridge today links these two great oceans across the Eurasian continent, Lincoln’s economist Henry Carey and his friends promoted “encircling the world with iron,” through rail projects connecting the entire world — including a bridge over the Bering Strait connecting Russia and the American continent — a project which is now supported by both Russia and China, lacking only the will on the American side to join hands for the development of all. President Putin identified the Bering Strait Bridge project as a “war avoidance” policy, capturing the concept of “Peace through Development.”

At the end of World War II, President Roosevelt envisioned the use of the astonishing productive power in the U.S., built to defeat fascism and militarism, put to the use of building the formerly colonized world, together with Russia and China, our wartime allies.

But Roosevelt died too soon, his weak successor Truman aided the return of the European powers to their colonies, and instead of development, we saw the continuation of colonial wars. Now, rather than joint development, we see NATO forces moving to the Russian borders in Europe, a “pivot” to Asia with the intention of bringing more U.S. warships to the Pacific, massive U.S. military power deployed into an ASEAN country, including on Palawan Island in the South China Sea, THAAD high-altitude missiles in a ring around China and the Russian Far East, while both Russia and China, although remaining within their immediate geographic regions, are building up their military and conducting huge military exercises themselves, warning that any utopian dream of “winning” a nuclear war is pure madness, that the entire world would be destroyed.

Yet the solution to this threat to civilization is before us here today. Xi Jinping’s offer to President Obama at the 2014 APEC meeting for the U.S. to join in the Silk Road process, both in Eurasia and, as Helga LaRouche has proposed, in building a World Land-Bridge.

Look at Asia’s leading hot spots, North Korea, the South China Sea, and the extension of Mideast terrorism into the region. In Korea, even as tensions swell and wane and you all know that tensions are at a high point today — an extraordinary development is taking place. Three leading South Korean corporations, Hyundai Marine, POSCO, and KORAIL, have formed a joint venture with Russia and North Korea around the North Korean port of Rason. Both the Russians and Chinese have built new port facilities there, with new road and rail connections to China and to Vladivostok. Over the past year, Russian coal is being transported to this new port in North Korea, shipped on Hyundai ships to South Korea, then by KORAIL to POSCO steel plants. The South Korean government is also rebuilding the rail lines that lead to the border, with the intention of eventually linking South Korea to the Trans-Siberian Railway through North Korea, completing the vision of the Eurasian Land-Bridge “from Pusan to Rotterdam.” Only by giving the North such a stake in the transformation of all of Asia through the Silk Road process is there a chance to end the conflict peacefully.

So also in the South China Sea. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Malaysia this month, posed a win-win solution as part of the New Maritime Silk Road sponsored by President Xi Jinping. Minister Wang announced that the building of the new artificial islands had been completed and that the next step is to “build facilities primarily used for public purposes, including lighthouses, maritime emergency rescue, weather stations, marine scientific research as well as medical and first-aid buildings. Once the construction is completed,” he said, “China is willing to open these facilities to countries in the region. As the largest coastal country in the South China Sea, China has the ability and obligation to provide these maritime public goods to countries in the region.” Again, Peace through Development, if the world chooses it rather than war. It is of note that the western press entirely blacked out this portion of Wang Yi’s speech.

Another major project on the agenda of the New Maritime Silk Road, one which was conceived long before the building of the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal, is the Kra Canal across the Isthmus of Kra in southern Thailand. Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, in 1983 and 1984, co-sponsored with the Thai government, two symposia in Bangkok on the tremendous potential for the entire Pacific-Indian Ocean Basin of building a canal and a trade hub in southern Thailand, which would shorten the travel time in the world’s busiest sea lanes, avoid the imminent overcrowding of the Malacca Strait, while providing development to the Muslim population in the region who face economic exclusion and relative poverty, which has fed the growth of terrorist movements in the region.

Similarly, the Silk Road Economic Belt is already bringing massive development to western China and Central Asia, as a necessary precondition for ending the poverty, drugs, and isolation, which feed terrorist recruitment among the youth. The Schiller Institute has circulated a petition calling on the U.S. and Europe to reject geopolitics in favor of win-win cooperation with the BRICS in the New Silk Road and the Global Land-Bridge. The task facing mankind today is to see the current crisis as an opportunity for human creativity and cooperation as the necessary means to finally put war behind us , as truly impossible in the age of thermonuclear weapons, and embrace Peace Through Development based on the common aims of Mankind.

The entire global strategic situation can be summed up in two essential facts.  First, Wall Street is disintegrating and the entire US economy is about to vanish, unless immediate action is taken.  Second, President Barack Obama is moving in the direction of launching thermonuclear war against Russia.  He is seeking an element of surprise, trying to outguess the Russians.
 
The disintegration of Wall Street, already underway, is the driver for Obama’s insane planned provocations against Russia.  Virtually everything that is presented as “news” is a diversion, aimed at blinding the American people and world leaders to the simple reality that we are already in an immediate trajectory towards financial and economic disintegration and a global war of annihilation.
 
Lyndon LaRouche, in dialogue with a Manhattan audience and close colleagues over the weekend, spelled out the clear solution to this crisis.
 
First, President Obama must be removed from office, immediately, using provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, which provides for the removal of a President who is mentally or physically unfit to continue to serve.  By virtue of his commitment to provoke thermonuclear war with Russia, Obama has proven that he is insane and unfit to continue.  
 
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can facilitate this process by publicly presenting what she knows about President Obama’s willful and lying cover-up of the murders of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American officials in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012.  Up until now, Clinton has been intimidated into silence, just as she was intimidated into initially going along with Obama’s lies on the night of the Benghazi 9/11 attack.  Now, she must speak the truth to the American people.
 
There is no way Wall Street can survive.  It is already dead.  There is, however, a solution.  Shut down Wall Street, cut off the flow of any further bailout to Wall Street.  Put the current system through bankruptcy reorganization under a restored Glass Steagall system.  Then begin the immediate emission of Federal credit to create jobs, under an economic reconstruction program, modeled on the precise measures adopted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt from the moment he was sworn in as President in March 1933.

Take the Wall Street skyscrapers and convert them into machines of progress, FDR-style.
 
As LaRouche stated it:  “Cancel Wall Street.  Put people to work like FDR did.  We can get out of this crisis—not without pain, but we can survive and prosper.  Listen to the voice of FDR from afar.  We must get the American people to stop being stupid and accepting the existing system, as if there was no viable alternative.  There is a viable alternative, and it starts by cancelling Wall Street altogether.”
 
Cancel the Obama Presidency and cancel Wall Street and all of the pressing problems, which are centered exclusively in the trans-Atlantic region, can be solved. 

I’m interested, tell me more

Sources close to the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff confirm that there is growing fear that President Obama could trigger a thermonuclear war with Russia, and that the planned deployment of a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons into Europe is just the kind of “trip-wire” provocation that can lead to an all-out strategic conflict.

According to one source, top Pentagon officers are avoiding making any public comments about these fears, but are nevertheless growing more and more worried that President Obama could take actions against Russia, leading to an escalation into general war.

One source noted that, while even his sharpest critics admit that Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is an expert in nuclear warfare and disarmament policies, there is no one at the White House with any degree of competence to hold back Obama from some reckless action.  During the first Obama term, Gary Samore, a former Clinton Administration presidential advisor on nuclear policy, was White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction.  He had worked at Lawrence Livermore Labs, at the RAND Corporation, and at a number of think-tanks devoted to nuclear weapons policy.  Even critics of Samore acknowledge that he was well-informed on the issue, and when he left the Obama Administration, along with a number of other former Clinton Administration personnel, there was no one brought in to replace him who had any background on nuclear war and war-avoidance.

According to a source close to the JCS, President Obama is prepared to deploy 748 upgraded B-61-12 tactical nuclear weapons to continental Europe, all directed against Russia.  Russia has also deployed new-generation battlefield nuclear weapons to the Western front, in response to the Obama Administration’s ABM deployments and other provocations.

With European NATO countries in economic crisis, and with sequestration and the so-called “Asia pivot” draining conventional forces from Europe, the growing danger is that tactical nuclear weapons are being treated as “first resort” weapons, integrated into the conventional force commands in Europe.

Under these “trip-wire” conditions, the danger of President Obama remaining in office becomes existential.  As Lyndon LaRouche has warned, repeatedly in recent weeks and months, Obama is willing to run the risk of thermonuclear holocaust in his belief that he can bluff Russian President Putin into submission to Anglo-American demands.  Under these circumstances, Obama must be removed from office under the 25th Amendment before he triggers thermonuclear annihilation.  

Sources close to the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff confirm that there is growing fear that President Obama could trigger a thermonuclear war with Russia, and that the planned deployment of a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons into Europe is just the kind of “trip-wire” provocation that can lead to an all-out strategic conflict.

According to one source, top Pentagon officers are avoiding making any public comments about these fears, but are nevertheless growing more and more worried that President Obama could take actions against Russia, leading to an escalation into general war.

One source noted that, while even his sharpest critics admit that Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is an expert in nuclear warfare and disarmament policies, there is no one at the White House with any degree of competence to hold back Obama from some reckless action.  During the first Obama term, Gary Samore, a former Clinton Administration presidential advisor on nuclear policy, was White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction.  He had worked at Lawrence Livermore Labs, at the RAND Corporation, and at a number of think-tanks devoted to nuclear weapons policy.  Even critics of Samore acknowledge that he was well-informed on the issue, and when he left the Obama Administration, along with a number of other former Clinton Administration personnel, there was no one brought in to replace him who had any background on nuclear war and war-avoidance.

According to a source close to the JCS, President Obama is prepared to deploy 748 upgraded B-61-12 tactical nuclear weapons to continental Europe, all directed against Russia.  Russia has also deployed new-generation battlefield nuclear weapons to the Western front, in response to the Obama Administration’s ABM deployments and other provocations.

With European NATO countries in economic crisis, and with sequestration and the so-called “Asia pivot” draining conventional forces from Europe, the growing danger is that tactical nuclear weapons are being treated as “first resort” weapons, integrated into the conventional force commands in Europe.

Under these “trip-wire” conditions, the danger of President Obama remaining in office becomes existential.  As Lyndon LaRouche has warned, repeatedly in recent weeks and months, Obama is willing to run the risk of thermonuclear holocaust in his belief that he can bluff Russian President Putin into submission to Anglo-American demands.  Under these circumstances, Obama must be removed from office under the 25th Amendment before he triggers thermonuclear annihilation.  

Barack Obama intends to use this August through early September period, with Congress out of session, to launch a nuclear attack on Russia which will immediately become an annihilating nuclear war. He is moving right now, not only to take advantage of the absence of Congressional scrutiny, but also in a period of ongoing personnel shifts in the Pentagon, which mean that the top brass who would otherwise call a halt, are not in a position to stop him.

Obama has shut down all the regular civilian government channels of consultation with Russia which could otherwise avert war. Only the military-to-military channels remain. But he is using Pentagon personnel-changes to make them inoperative as well, as he prepares to launch war.

This war is not about Ukraine; Ukraine is only a pretext. Why did Obama’s top official, ex-Cheney advisor Victoria Nuland, brag about spending $5 billion replacing Ukraine governments? Why did she run a coup in early 2014 to replace the elected Ukraine government with swastika-carrying Nazis, under her chosen Prime Minister “Yats,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk? None of this was about Ukraine at all. It was all for the sake of a total war-provocation against Russia. How else could you describe Obama’s bringing open Nazis, along with hostile US troops, right onto Russia’s borders,— into the heart of Russia’s security zone? It was a provocation to prepare for a nuclear strike. That strike is now ready to go.

Russia will not strike the United States unprovoked. But Putin’s Russia is ready, once Obama strikes first, for a devastating, all-out retaliatory blow. Just that strike and counterstrike themselves, not to speak of the bigger process they unleash, will be enough to end human civilization, or even the human species.

Now, at one minute to midnight, leading Democrats, including Presidential candidates, have only one choice. They must calmly but firmly remove Obama’s hand from the nuclear button; take away his Presidential powers while there is still time. Your frightened “average citizen” may sputter that this is impossible, that it can’t be done. But it can be done, and in fact it has been done before under our Constitution. All that it takes is vision, courage and leadership. And these still exist in America. We have leaders who can come forth to do the job, as earlier in our history.

One such leader was our great President John F. Kennedy. Unlike most of his advisors, he understood what was at at stake when it came to the risk of war with Russia. Kennedy went around those advisors to prevent a thermonuclear war in 1962, through direct negotiations with Soviet leader Khrushchov, sometimes using his brother Bobby as a secret back-channel. Afterwards, some of our British-loving circles around Hoover’s FBI and the Dulles Brothers, were not so happy with what John Kennedy had done, so they killed him. Then they killed his brother Bobby later, when he was about to win the Democratic Presidential nomimation, and then go on to the Presidency.

But the Kennedys exemplify the quality of leadership we require today, to prevent thermonuclear war by removing Obama.

The successive murders of those two real leaders, ultimately led to the Presidency of Richard Nixon, who was one of our most mentally disturbed Presidents until the later George W. Bush, followed by the even worse Barack Obama. Nixon was trying to establish a dictatorship, but he was removed shortly after being re-elected. How? By the wisdom and leadership of leading Republicans. Recognizing Nixon’s advanced signs of insanity in Summer, 1974, and fearful that he might launch a military adventure, Nixon’s own Cabinet, under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, ordered the Pentagon to ignore any order he might give them. Soon thereafter, a committee of leading Republicans visited Nixon and told him he had to resign, which he did.

The 25th Amendment prescribes how to remove a President who “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” for physical or mental reasons. It has never been needed more than it is today; there is no greater moral insanity than Obama’s plan for launching thermonuclear war. If it happens, those who refuse to act to remove Obama are the ones responsible. Are they freezing up because they fear him as the murderer and the Nazi that he is? You lose the war if you flinch.

I’m interested, I’d like updates.

by Carlos Valdivieso

On Aug. 11-13, 2015, in front of Verdi’s birthplace in Roncole, Italy, the first Roncole Verdi Festival was held in honor of maestro Giuseppe Verdi, with three evenings of concerts and visits to the birthplace.

The event was interesting in itself, not only because it presented Verdi at his birthplace, but because it demonstrated that Classical music can be self-financed—an important signal today, when Classical culture is the object of official neglect and budget cuts. But the festival also had a historical and scientific significance, since all performances were at the scientific pitch, or “Verdi pitch” of A=432 Hz, as opposed to today’s tuning, which varies from 444 Hz up to 448 Hz and even higher.

Like other musicians of his time, Verdi knew that tuning the A above middle C to 432 Hz situates the well-tempered musical domain in harmony with the laws of the physical universe and how human beings perceive it. That’s why in 1884, Verdi wrote a letter to the Music Committee of the Italian government proposing the adoption A=432 Hz “for  mathematical needs.” His request for a scientific pitch was supported by the physicists Joseph Sauveur (1653-1716), Charles Meerens (1831-1909), Félix Savart (1791-1841), and also by the Italian scientists Archimede Montanelli (1848-1932) and Bartolomeo Grassi Landi, and thanks to their endorsement, a decree was adopted which established this “scientific pitch.”

The rush to high tuning started at the time of Russian and Austrian military bands, and later during Wagner’s influence (with a pitch between 440 Hz and 450 Hz), and it was the outcome of the search for a brilliant sound. In 1939, Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, imposed a pitch of A=440 Hz, without any scientific criteria, and despite a French referendum by 25,000 musicians who voted against this choice. After that, in London, A=440 Hz was established as the standard pitch, and to this day this arbitrary choice has been kept.

That is why this small but great-hearted Festival in Roncole is so important, since it opens up a discussion on whether one should look for a brilliant sound, or go back to the natural and scientific pitch chosen by Verdi, which improves the color of the voice and respects the laws of physics. Since 1988, the Schiller Institute has been campaigning to return to Verdi’s pitch, beginning with the first conference on scientific tuning at the Casa Verdi in Milan. A petition issued by that conference to adopt A=432 Hz was subsequently signed by more than 2,000 musicians all over the world, including such opera stars as Piero Cappuccilli (who gave the first example in both tunings at the Casa Verdi), Carlo Bergonzi, Plácido Domingo, Montserrat Caballé, Alfredo Kraus, and Mirella Freni, and it inspired a bill introduced into the Italian Parliament in 1988.

Piero Cappuccilli demonstrates the superiority of the Verdi tuning at a conference hosted by the Schiller Institute on April 9, 1988 at the Casa Verdi in Milan, Italy, which brought together some of the world’s most highly-regarded Classical singers and instrumentalists, to demand a return to an international tuning standard of C=256, or A=432.

Watch more Schiller Institute tuning demonstration videos here.

The conductor of the Roncole Verdi Orchestra was Maestro Silvano Frontalini, a profound scholar of Verdi’s works, promoter of the festival, and determined supporter of the Verdi pitch. Movisol and the Schiller Institute asked him a few questions after the concert.

Movisol: Thank you, Maestro, for these three great concerts! First of all, we would like to know how you got the idea of this festival?

Frontalini: The festival was initially the result of unemployed musicians, who were broke and asked themselves “What are we going to do? Do we change professions and become waiters? Do we commit suicide?” And we decided instead to create a job ourselves. We organized ourselves, spoke to the communities and asked them, “Let us organize concerts, we will live off the ticket proceeds and some local private sponsors, and we will not ask the City of Busseto for any money at all.” And as a matter of fact, we received no money, only the location. I asked for an endorsement from the Ministry of Culture, which would have cost them nothing, and they did not even care to answer. So we are left in the jungle, abandoned to ourselves, but despite this we managed to create a festival which even an opera house would dream of.

Movisol: So, one can say that the festival was born out of love for music and voluntary work?

Frontalini: Yes, from the voluntary work of musicians and some other people who helped us, since we could not have done it alone. We did find an association which believed in this project.

Movisol: Let’s talk about A=432 Hz, or Verdi’s pitch. How did you get the idea of performing at this pitch?

Frontalini: It was my idea. I knew it would involve logistical problems, but on the other hand it was a small festival, nobody knew us, and it would make no sense to perform the usual Verdi arias which are performed everywhere else. So I decided, in Verdi’s honor, to invent something which nobody else had done here. We did not manage to get to 432 Hz—we got to A=435—but A=432 remains the target. There are studies of “musicotherapy” which show that 432 Hz produces physical benefits.

Movisol: Why is it so difficult to get to 432 Hz. Was it problems with the wind instruments?

Frontalini: Because it requires a lot of money. We should buy two oboes, two bassoons, and two Baroque flutes, which together cost around 25,000 Euro, or rent them, and they’re asking for 1,000 Euro a day. String instruments and brass instruments have no problem lowering their tuning, but flutes do. With oboes and bassoons we managed by getting longer reeds, but with the flute it is not possible, because they are built for A=440 Hz, and if you bring them down to A=432 Hz you get off-pitch in the high notes. But this idea of A=432 Hz moved something: I was invited by a number of communities in this area to make a feasibility study on A=432 Hz.

Movisol: Some people oppose Verdi’s pitch, arguing that a higher tuning makes the sound more brilliant. What do you say to them?

Frontalini: I share Verdi’s idea. Sure, with a lower tuning the music is less brilliant, but the color of the sound is better, you can build a better blend of the sound. Musicians understand this, other people don’t. It gains in musicality.

Movisol: On behalf of Movisol and the Schiller Institute, we thank you for your time, and hope to see you again next year for the second edition of the festival!

Frontalini: You’re welcome, thank to you for your support, and see you next year!

After the concert, we also interviewed some of the singers—sopranos, tenors, and baritones—asking them how was it to sing in this lower tuning, and all of them answered the same way: Singing is much easier, particularly in the register shifts. This demonstrates what Lyndon LaRouche has been saying all along, that “music is based on the human singing voice,” and that instruments should adapt to it, not the other way around.