Author: Alicia

The President of the Greek Parliament, Zoe Konstantopoulou, gave a very strong speech during the July 11 plenary debate over whether to approve prior actions for negotiations for a third bailout. It hits all the right points and is worth quoting. It was translated by Nicholas Evangelos Levis for AnalyzeGreece! from the Greek text on Left.gr; the full translation is available here.

Although in conscience, Konstantopoulou could not vote yes to back the government, she could also not vote against the government, and instead voted “present,” a form of abstention, because, as she put it, “the government is being blackmailed to consent to conditions that do not represent it, that do not come from it, that it is struggling to reverse and prevent. The prime minister spoke with honesty, bravery, boldness, and selflessness. He is the youngest of all Greek prime ministers, and he has fought as much as any of his predecessors for the democratic and social rights of the people and of the younger generations. He represented and represents our generation, and he gives us hope. I honor him and will always honor him for this stand and this choice.

“And at the same time, I consider it my binding responsibility, as president of the parliament, not to close my eyes or to pretend that I do not understand blackmail. I cannot make it easy. I could never vote for and legalize the content of this agreement.

“I think the same is true and would apply to the prime minister, who is today blackmailed with a weapon threatening the survival of his people. I believe the same applies to the government and to the parliamentary groups who support it.”

Konstantopoulou says, “Everyone has the right and obligation to resist. No resistance in history was easy.”

Here are major excerpts from her speech:

“The Greek people entrusted this Government with the great cause of releasing them from the shackles of the Memorandum, from the vise of surveillance and supervision imposed on society under the pretext of debt.

“This debt furthermore is illegal, unfair, odious, and unsustainable, as demonstrated in the preliminary findings of the Truth Commission on Public Debt, and as the creditors already knew in 2010. This debt was not incurred as a cyclical phenomenon. It was created by the previous governments through corruption in procurement, bribes, misleading terms, corporate stipulations, and astronomical interest rates, all to the benefit of foreign banks and companies. …

“After the Second World War, Germany enjoyed the greatest remission of debt so as to allow it to get back on track. This was done with the generous partnership of Greece.” But, she continues, “Germany is behaving as if history and the Greek people owe a debt to her—as if she expects to receive a historic payback for her own atrocities. Germany is promoting and enforcing a policy that constitutes a crime, not only against the Greek people, but a crime against humanity. This is a criminal concept, a widespread and systematic attack on a population with the aim and calculation to bring about its total or partial extermination. And, unfortunately, governments and institutions that are required to live up to their history and their responsibility have aligned themselves behind this attack.

“Ladies and gentlemen,

“The artificial and deliberate creation of conditions of humanitarian disaster so as to keep the people and the government in conditions of suffocation and under the threat of a chaotic bankruptcy constitutes a direct violation of all international human rights protection treaties, including the Charter of the United Nations, the European treaties, and even the statutes of the International Criminal Court. Blackmail is not legal. And those who create conditions that eliminate freedom of the will may not speak of ‘options.’ The lenders are blackmailing the government. They are acting fraudulently, since they have known since 2010 that this debt is unsustainable. They are acting consciously, since their statements anticipate the need for humanitarian aid in Greece. Humanitarian assistance for what? For an unexpected and inadvertent natural disaster? Is it an unpredictable earthquake, flooding, a fire?

“No.

“Humanitarian aid [would be required] because of their conscious and calculated choice to deprive the people of the means of survival, closing the tap of liquidity in retaliation for the democratic choice of the government and the parliament to call a referendum and to turn to the people to decide their own future. The Greek people honored the Government that entrusted them, and the parliament that allowed them the right to take their lives and fates in their own hands. With bravery and pride they announced

“NO to blackmail

“NO to ultimatums

“NO to the Memoranda of servitude

“NO to the repayment of a debt they did not create and that is not attributable to them

“NO to new measures of impoverishment and exhaustion. …

“The Greek people are the second to suffer this form of warfare in the Eurozone, preceded by Cyprus in March 2013. This attempt to impose measures rejected by the people in a referendum, using the blackmail of closed banks and the threat of bankruptcy, constitutes a violent overthrow of the Greek constitution and deprives the parliament of the authority granted to it by the constitution.

“Everyone has the right and obligation to resist. No resistance in history was easy. But we undertook the popular vote, and we trust the people on the difficult matters. It is to the difficult matters that we must respond. And we must not fear.”

The British Queen, through the agency of Schaeuble and Merkel, forced a killed austerity program down the throats of the Greek people. The problem is, the United States is actually more bankrupt than Greece! What is Obama’s next move now that killer austerity is on the table? Tune in live tonight at 8PM Eastern.

The following resolution was passed by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) at its 86th Annual National Convention, July 11, 2015, in Salt Lake City, Utah. LULAC is the nation’s oldest and largest Latino organization, with a stated mission to “advance the economic condition, education attainment, political influence, housing, health and civil rights of the Hispanic population of the United States.”

RESOLUTION: LULAC REAFFIRMS SUPPORT FOR RESTORATION OF GLASS-STEAGALL BANKING LAW, URGES ADOPTION OF H.R. 381 AND S. 1709

WHEREAS, in response to the Great Depression of the 1930’s, Congress enacted the Federal Banking Act of 1933, known as the Glass-Steagall Act, that separated commercial banking from investment and speculative banking; and

WHEREAS, the Glass-Steagall Act successfully protected American citizens and jobs from 1933-1999, when it was repealed, allowing commercial and speculative bank activity to merge, underwriting financial bubbles in the tens of trillions of dollars and creating banks “too big to fail”; and

WHEREAS, the hyper-leveraged mass of debt is now on the verge of a new 2008-style blow-out, with Greece and Puerto Rico demonstrating the need for immediate debt reorganization beginning with restoring Glass-Steagall; and

WHEREAS, in its July 2011 national convention, LULAC endorsed the restoration of Glass-Steagall, to re-connect the banking system with productive jobs, infrastructure, and other physical economic growth; and

WHEREAS, H.R. 381, the “Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2015”, calling for the re-instatement of Glass-Steagall, was introduced in January 2015 and currently has over 60 bipartisan co-sponsors; and the parallel S. 1709, the “21st Century Glass-Steagall Act”, was introduced July 7, 2015, with four bipartisan co-sponsors;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that LULAC reaffirms its support for the restoration of the Glass-Steagall banking law, and demands that Congress immediately enact HR 381 and S 1709.

LaRouche PAC’s New Paradigm Show will now be live at 5 PM (EDT), 2 PM (PDT) every Wednesday. We are encouraging questions and comments from the audience, either submitted prior to the show, or submitted live during the show. This week’s show will continue to expose the destruction of science beginning in the year 1900, and address questions which have been submitted about the fraud of environmentalism and the motions of our Solar System through the Galaxy. Questions can be submitted via Twitter (#newparadigm), Facebook (FaceBook.com/LaRouchePAC), or email (LPAC.Basement@gmail.com). 

This week has seen a flurry of media coverage of the probability of a coming “mini-“ice age caused by decreasing in solar activity (an accelerating decline over the coming decade and lasting to the 2040s or 2050s). The recent coverage stems from a new model by a professor at the University of Northumbria, Valentina Zharkova. Zharkova’s model is said to be highly accurate, and forecasts weakening solar activity in the coming decades — bringing the Sun into conditions similar to those of the so-called Maunder grand minimum (when sunspots virtually disappeared between 1645 and 1715, and northern Europe experienced the little ice age).

The LPAC Basement team is working up a fuller analysis, but we can preliminarily highlight three things:

First—this is only the latest of a series of independent studies indicating that the Sun is going into a prolonged weakening phase. Observations of different types of changes in the Sun (done by independent groups) have been cited as indications of weakening solar activity, including the persistent weakening of the magnetic strength of sunspots (approaching a point where the magnetic strength won’t be able to produce sunspots). Other teams have studied historical proxy records for changes in solar activity, identifying longer-term cycles in solar activity (by which we are presently due for a new weakening period). The Russian scientist Dr. Khabibullo Abdusamatov (head of the Space research lab of the Central Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences at Pulkovo) has been forecasting an upcoming solar grand minimum for some time.

Second—some of the scientists who think that the Sun is heading into a prolonged weak phase are also willing to go against the man-made climate-change mafia and warn that this will cause significant cooling on Earth. The author of this new modeling study, Dr. Zharkova, has been quoted saying this will cause cooling. The work of Henrik Svensmark and Nir Shaviv also tells us that a weaker Sun will allow more galactic cosmic rays into the inner Solar System, which will cause more low-level cloud formation (and cooling) on Earth. Others go further, and warn that such a little ice age could deal a major blow to global agricultural food production. Among these are John Casey, former White House space program advisor and consultant to NASA Headquarters, and Joseph D’Aleo, co-founder of the Weather Channel and leading “climate- change skeptic.”

Third—certain studies indicate that weaker solar activity brings increased seismic activity on Earth. This was rather clearly demonstrated in a 2011 study by Japanese scientist Dr. Yumoto, which showed that larger earthquakes consistently occurred more often during solar minimums over the past fifty years. Another study by the just cited John Casey claims that the New Madrid zone in the central USA has consistently experienced catastrophic earthquakes during periods of extremely low solar activity (like the Maunder and Dalton grand minimums) over the past 600 years — with Casey warning that a new major earthquake could hit the region in the coming decades.

We can look at this evidence from a higher perspective. The weakening of the Sun opens up the Earth to stronger influences from the Galaxy, and the coming climatic and potentially seismic changes on Earth could provide an opportunity to better understand our Galaxy (through its effects on our planet). This is addressed in the upcoming Basement research report, “Towards a Galactic Science Driver,” featured in the upcoming issue of EIR.

Among the numerous hideous features of the EU-Greek “agreement,” two stand out as modeled on what the British Empire designed as their “Cyprus Template,” as Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem coined the phrase back in March 2013. This is a “bail-in” of Greece’s assets, including its banking system, in order to bail-out the bankrupt trans-Atlantic banks. Such measures will not save the insolvent system, but they will contribute to killing off millions of Greeks—which is the British Empire’s intended result.

The ECB has not increased its ELA lending to Greece by one euro, despite the July 13 deal, which means that the Greek banks still cannot reopen their doors. Nor is there any reason to believe that they ever will—until they are taken over and picked apart by international vulture creditors. Everything that Greek citizens and businesses hold in bank accounts is now controlled by the international banks, and will probably be stolen, as it was in Cyprus. The Euro Summit statement of July 13 said that “a buffer [will be established] of EU10 to EU25 billion for the banking sector in order to address potential bank recapitalization needs and resolution costs [emphasis added].”

A July 13 New York Times article takes note of this feature of the plan, to “replenish capital and, if needed, to close insolvent lenders… The mention of bank ‘resolution’ in the statement — a term meaning to shutter a failed lender — was an acknowledgment that some banks may be too badly damaged to survive.” The article reports that Greek banks have lost about 25% of deposits since December, and that although the ECB is scheduled to meet this Thursday to discuss ELA funds to Greece, it is not scheduled to conduct a “thorough review of Greek banks until after the summer.”

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing in the July 14 Telegraph, says that the decisive factor in the “coup” against Greece, was the ECB’s asphyxiation of the country by freezing ELA funds. He reports that cash at Greek banks will run out this week, both for the 60-euro daily withdrawal limit, as well as for the payment of 120-euro-per-week pensions and unemployment.

Lyndon LaRouche commented that “this is going to cause an explosion.” Cutting off pensions for these people is tantamount to killing them, he stated.

A second “bail-in” feature of the EU statement rammed down Greece’s throat, is the transfer of EU50 billion in Greek assets targeted for privatization, to an “independent fund” under EU supervision, which will be used principally to repay Greece’s phony debt.

And while the Euro Summit declaration insisted that “nominal haircuts [write-downs] on the debt cannot be undertaken,” even the IMF issued an alarmed memo on the eve of that summit warning, as it had before, that the Greek debt would remain completely unsustainable unless Greece were given a 30-year grace period on all its debt, along with major extensions on its maturity. Failing that, the IMF warned, Greece’s creditors should prepare for “deep upfront haircuts” on existing loans, willy nilly.

Leader of Greek Independence Party Panos Kammenos (now Greek Foreign Minister) in Washington, D.C., December, 2013, organizing members of the U.S. Congress with an LPAC delegation for a transatlantic Glass-Steagall

Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, party leader of the Independent Greeks government coalition partner, issued a statement charging that the agreement forced on Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras constitutes a coup that is still ongoing.

“It is without a doubt obvious to everyone in Europe, that a coup took place in the heart of Europe,” Kammenos charged. “The prime minister [Alexis Tsipras] was blackmailed into agreeing to a document that was different from the one authorized by Parliament and unanimously adopted by the plenary. They are adamant about bringing down the government and replacing it with one that was not elected by the people.”

Therefore, he said, there are parts which his party would not support.

“We are committed to voting for what we had agreed to at the political leaders’ council and only that,” he said. Referring to the measures imposed by Brussels, he said, “We will not allow this game to continue. We will proceed with Alexis Tsipras and the people.”

Commenting on speculation of the formation of a national unity government, he said that this is what those who are counting on austerity want, and the Independent Greeks will not be part of it.

Energy Minister and leader of Syriza’s Left Platform Panagiotis Lafazanis called on the government and Prime Minister Tsipras to reject the preliminary deal.  In a statement posted on his ministry’s website Tuesday, Lafazanis said that the July 13 deal is “unacceptable and unworthy of being credited to a radical party, like Syriza, and a fighting government, which pledged to abolish the memorandums and austerity.” He accused the creditors and the “German establishment” of treating Greece “as though it were their colony” and behaving like “callous extortionists.”

While the agreement might pass Parliament, Lafazanis said, “it will not pass the people, who will effectively annul it. The government and the prime minister himself, even in the final hour, have the right and the opportunity to reposition themselves, and take back the deal before any final and conclusive decisions are taken by Parliament.”

He charged, “The dilemma of creditors: capitulation or destruction is fake and terroristic and has collapsed in the popular consciousness.”

State Minister Alekos Flambouraris also issued a statement charging that the creditors attempted to make a “coup d’état against the Greek government” at the Euro Summit and the “extreme anti-European forces that attempted it do not stop.” He warned the that Greeks “must feel the danger for our country. We must understand the intention of the reactionary forces to humiliate us, to divide the people and to devastate the country. To not deliberately or unintentionally contribute in the success of such plans.”

The population is also beginning to protest with their feet. The public sector union, ADEDY, called for a 24-hour strike of all civil service workers on July 15, when the Parliament is supposed to vote on the agreement. The union members will then hold a demonstration in front of the Parliament in Syntagma Square at 7 p.m.

More rallies are expected on the same day. 

The inclusion of India, along with Pakistan, two major South Asian nations, as full members will enable the security grouping of SCO to realize its full potential, said China’s Tsinghua University research professor Xie Chao, in an article Tuesday in China’s state-run Global Times.

“It is high time for both [India and China] to try more concerted efforts in multilateral security forum. For instance, a joint work is urgently required for their joint efforts to fight terrorism, especially the threats posed by radical Islam and drug trafficking from neighboring Afghanistan. The latter is a neighbor of nearly all the countries in the SCO,” said Xie Chao.

At the recently concluded BRICS and SCO summits at Ufa, one of the most important decisions made was the plan to integrate China’s Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) under the auspices of the SCO. On the integration, strong support was lent by both China and Russia.

Rejecting the views of some analysts who consider that inclusion of India and Pakistan — who have a number of unsettled bilateral disputes and have fought three short wars over those disputes — would be disruptive for SCO, Xie said in his article that “there is no record of India bringing bilateral issues to multilateral forums. As a matter of fact, it is in its interest to keep the issues in the region rather than drag in outside powers.”

On the contrary, the article pointed out that “the SCO will provide another platform for China to discuss its relations with India when both are finding a range of issues of common interests, together with all other members in the bloc. Actually history has proven that they can cooperate very well in a bunch of multilateral framework.””It was a political decision for China to accept more powers into the bloc since the expansion is unavoidable. All in all, an open SCO is better than a closed one,” Xie concluded.

Lyndon LaRouche pointed directly to the British Monarchy, and Queen Elizabeth herself, as being responsible for the economic butchery being imposed on Greece today by her messengers, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

“That’s what the Queen’s late-June visit to Germany was all about, including her personal conversations with Merkel,” LaRouche stated today. The July 13 Euro Summit statement on Greece is a reflection of the British Monarchy’s policy of intentional depopulation and genocide, not some plan to collect the debt, which is manifestly impossible to collect under the kinds of conditions now being imposed on Greece. The British Monarchy’s stated goal, LaRouche explained, is to reduce the world’s population down to one billion people or less. And the EU has, for the moment, used the British Monarchy’s power to make of Greece a bloody example to make sure that no nation or people attempt to break out of the Eurozone concentration camp.

What the EU statement would enforce on Greece, with its take-no-prisoners diktats, is the “Cyprus template” so proudly announced by Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem back in March 2013. This is the “bail-in” robbery of the population’s bank deposits, as well as 50 billion euros worth of state-held companies and other national assets, on the way to butchering the population.

“They have no authority to do this,” LaRouche emphasized today. “There is a whole world out there, including nations such as Russia, China and others in Asia,” that are outside this insanity and are not going to concede to the world being run this way, because they know it means thermonuclear war. When they put their foot down, France will break from Germany, and other nations will do the same. The EU as a unit is finished: it is just a matter of when it crumbles.

Inside Germany as well, there are growing forces that will prefer to dump Merkel and Schaeuble, rather than see Germany destroyed as well. Merkel and Schaeuble are not reflective of German policy generally, LaRouche explained. “They are two jerks following the Queen’s orders,” and should be thrown out. The same holds for Barack Obama, on both counts.

LaRouche laid into the British Monarchy: “What are they doing? Going back to the Roman Empire?” This has no connection to reality; it is completely arbitrary and has no moral foundation. It is an attack on the independence and sovereignty of nations, and cannot be tolerated by a civilized world. It is bait for a thermonuclear war.

“We cannot have an international system like this,” LaRouche said. We are human beings, and human beings cannot be treated like slaves, the way the Southern Confederacy in the United States did—and still does, as seen in the legacy, still, of Thomas Jefferson. Greece is now being given the Confederate treatment, and American patriots will not tolerate this. For example, a group of four Senators have re-introduced Glass-Steagall legislation into the Senate, whose effect would be to bankrupt the British Monarchy’s Wall Street and the City of London, as they should be.

As for Hillary Clinton, LaRouche said, she has bounced herself out of the Presidential campaign by taking up a position, and sticking to it, against the return of Glass-Steagall. She does not have the qualifications to run, if she ignores the urgent need for Glass-Steagall, both to stop British economic genocide as well as their drive for thermonuclear war.

Join us for a live, hour-plus Q&A session with Lyndon LaRouche, Thursday night at 9PM Eastern. Each week Mr. LaRouche engages with activists, supporters and people just like you to examine the fundamental issues and challenges underlying the social, economic and political turmoil of our day. Don’t miss this week: Glass-Steagall in the Senate, the Murder of Greece and more.

NASA: “One of the final images taken before New Horizons made it’s closest approach to Pluto on 15 July 2015.”

At 7:49 a.m. EDT July 14th, the New Horizons spacecraft will make its closest approach to Pluto—a fly-by that takes it a mere 7,700-odd miles from the surface of the dwarf planet—ending a 3 billion-mile journey, that took 9.5 years to make. Until now, the most sophisticated ground-based telescopes, and even the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, only revealed a fuzzy ball. Everything we will learn about Pluto will be new. Residing in the Kuiper Belt, beyond the orbit of the planets, Pluto is the largest in a class of trans-Neptunian objects, which followed a different evolutionary path than the eight bodies now considered as the Solar System’s planets. Although it had been proposed that this icy cold and dark world would be featureless, the opposite is being revealed.

Over the past week, as New Horizons came closer to Pluto, scientists could discern dark spots and dark features, indicating an active geological past; they noted that they were able to observe nitrogen escaping from the atmosphere of Pluto from farther away than they had expected, which could indicate the source is stronger, or the escape from Pluto is stronger; they discovered that there are methane and hydrogen in Pluto’s polar ice cap; and that the small body is actually larger than they had been able to see from a distance, through its atmosphere. These are observations and hints. The measurements from the suite of seven scientific instruments on board New Horizons, which will be delivered to Earth over the next year, should help provide some answers, and raise more questions.

Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, which is half the size of Pluto, are considered a two-planet system, as they rotate around a common center of gravity, “like a pair of figure skaters, clasping hands.” Charon is, itself, turning out to be a world with intriguing characteristics, including craters, a dark north polar region, and a chasm in its southern hemisphere that is longer and deeper than the Grand Canyon. Fourteen minutes after skimming above Pluto, New Horizons will zip past Charon, and then look back. Both Pluto and Charon will then be observed from the dark side, opposite the Sun-facing side, as New Horizons proceeds to farther reaches.

Although the Pluto fly-by will be just before 8 a.m., the spacecraft will not start sending data back to Earth immediately, but instead complete its scientific mission. Then it will interrupt its science observations for 15 minutes, and turn itself around to point its antenna toward Earth and send back engineering data. It takes 4.5 hours for transmissions from Pluto reach NASA’s Deep Space Network. All told, it will not be until nearly 9 p.m., that the scientists and engineers will find out if New Horizons is in good health and survived its Pluto encounter. They hope to start to have data coming back to Earth the day after the fly-by but it will be a trickle, due to the very low data rate by which it can transmit. 

For this week’s show we feature LPAC Science Team member Benjamin Deniston’s presentation to the Schiller Institute’s “Rebuilding the World in the BRICS Era” Paris Conference. Sharing a panel with Deniston were presentations from Prof. François Gervais, “Does the real climate confirm the models of virtual climate?” and Prof. Carl-Otto Weiss, “The climate change is due to natural cycles”.

The full conference proceedings can be found here.

For this week’s show we feature LPAC Science Team member Benjamin Deniston’s presentation to the Schiller Institute’s “Rebuilding the World in the BRICS Era” Paris Conference. Sharing a panel with Deniston were presentations from Prof. François Gervais, “Does the real climate confirm the models of virtual climate?” and Prof. Carl-Otto Weiss, “The climate change is due to natural cycles”.

The full conference proceedings can be found here.

With much of the world in a dither over hourly developments around Greece, Lyndon LaRouche today cut through to the heart of the matter:

LaRouche stated that this includes the United States, which is entirely bankrupt. Wall Street is totally bankrupt; it represents no wealth, it has no real funds, and deserves zero support. The collapse of the Euro system is underway, and is having chain-reaction effects across the trans-Atlantic region—only some part of South America may make it.

The United States dollar is now in jeopardy, LaRouche warned. We have to recognize that the increase in worthless financial assets, including all of Wall Street’s debts, cannot be covered. If that is tried, a chain-reaction collapse is assured. The argument is to pretend that there is no such systemic problem, that it is all a matter of Greece refusing to pay.

The issue is, how are we going to keep the United States alive with the entire trans-Atlantic system crumbling right now? It is certainly not going to be on the basis of the Republican party, and de facto Republican President Barack Obama, who has to be removed from office immediately, if the U.S. is to survive the financial crash as well as the British Empire’s intent to launch thermonuclear warfare against Russia and China.

We need a Glass-Steagall deal for the United States right now, LaRouche said, in order to save what’s left of our crumbling physical economy. The Wall Street banks, and the entire British Empire, are filled with filth, financial and otherwise, and have to be held accountable for their crimes. “We cannot bail these bastards out,” LaRouche stated.

Germany is the other critical nation at this juncture, LaRouche stated. If Germany dumps Obama’s insane sanctions policy against Russia, and gets into business again with Russia, this could serve as a block against the severity of the trans-Atlantic collapse. It is in Germany’s national interest to do so; and it is also the best option for Europe as a whole—the advantages and implications would be tremendous.

The problem is German Chancellor Murky Merkel, along with her Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. But the pressure is growing in Germany to escape from the trap of the European collapse, and Merkel and Schäuble’s departure from government could open the way to that path.

The time to act is now, LaRouche stated. The entire trans-Atlantic system is going down; but its replacement is at hand with a Glass-Steagall reorganization in the United States and internationally, and joining with the half of humanity represented by the BRICS process, in reconstructing Man’s commitment to science and a global physical-economic renaissance.

The number of Americans committed to ending geopolitics and joining the BRICS is growing. Sign & circulate the petition now.