Author: Alicia

With only a few hours remaining before the Presidential election in the United States, the cover of the current Time Magazine captures the mood in the country about the election process: Hillary and Trump are shown holding a sign reading “The End Is Near.”        

November 14, 2016 cover image of Time magazine.

But all things are not equal in this election. Nearly everyone is trying to figure out who is the lesser of two evils, as the press harps on the “totally divided nation.” But Lyndon LaRouche has made clear in the past weeks that the nation is in fact not divided — there is near unanimity in the hatred of Wall Street; the demand for Glass Steagall to crush the “too-big-to-fail” speculative monsters on Wall Street; hatred of the perpetual wars we have fought under Bush and Obama; hatred of the open planning for a nuclear confrontation with Russia and China; hatred for the disintegration of the US productive economy and the nation’s infrastructure; hatred for the drug epidemic which has torn families apart and destroyed the lives of millions of Americans, even while Obama preaches drug legalization; and, most of all, hatred for Obama. What is missing is a positive vision of what America can be, for itself and for the world.        

It is this gap in people’s vision which the program presented by LaRouche, his Four Laws, is designed to fill, to restore optimism to a demoralized nation. And there are signs across the country that this concept is awakening the American people to this great task, at a great moment in history. The majority of the American people want Glass Steagall; the leaders of industry want access to credit, to produce and to create jobs; the scientific leaders of the nation are prepared to restore American leadership in space, in fusion power development, and to teach a new generation of scientists. This is the inspiration the nation needs to rise above the degenerate political leadership and degenerate culture which has descended upon the country, and to restore the Hamiltonian policies which made this a great nation. We can, and must, restore that role today. With truly great leaders now running Russia and China, who are already building the rest of the world through win-win cooperation in science and development, the U.S. simply needs to join this new paradigm, and drive it forward, rather than threatening to blow it up.        

Any effort to achieve this revolutionary shift in America must begin with the defeat of Barack Obama and his clone (or worse), Hillary Clinton. Even today, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announced that 300,000 troops in Europe are to be placed on “high alert” to prepare for a war with Russia, while Hillary continues to rant that Russia and the KGB are threatening the western world, and are the cause of her potential loss in the presidential race. Even the Green candidate for President, Jill Stein, who opposes Trump on nearly everything, agrees with him that Hillary’s announced plans for no-fly-zones in Syria “amounts to a declaration of war against Russia,” and warned citizens that “in this election, we are not only deciding what kind of world we will have, but whether we will have a world or not going forward.” This is, of course, the warning that Lyndon LaRouche has been making since the systemic and escalating takeover of government policy by London and Wall Street following the assassination of John Kennedy.        

There will be no pause, no “honeymoon” for whoever gets elected on Tuesday. LaRouche today emphasized that “we are heading into a big crisis – a very big crisis.”  The population is enraged at the collapse of the nation and will demand real solutions immediately. Ending Obama’s criminal warfare, implementing Glass Steagall, cannot wait for the new government in January. The population is ready to act, and must act, immediately

Donald Trump’s call that “it’s time for a 21st Century Glass Steagall” stated in his Oct. 26 Charlotte speech, goes back to deeper roots in that side of the American banking system committed to increased productivity through loans to manufacturing, agriculture and infrastructure. This includes thousands of community banks that oppose Wall Street’s casino economy.

These forces gathered at the Huntington Convention Center in Cleveland, Ohio on July 11, 2016 to insert Glass-Steagall into the Republican Party platform, prior to the July 18-21 Republican National Convention. Columnist John Gizzi, in an article in the July 12 Newsmax, entitled “Why Is Bernie Sanders’ Favorite Legislation in GOP Platform?” disclosed, “Meeting at the Huntington Convention Center in Cleveland [on July 11], the Government Reform Subcommittee of the GOP Platform Committee voted to include in the party platform restoration of Glass-Steagall landmark legislation that separated risky trading and investment form traditional banking activities such as business lending and consumer finance after it was passed in 1933.”

Gizzi stressed, “As to how … Glass-Steagall found its way into the Republican Platform, I spoke to the driving force behind it within the GOP. John Lynch, Platform Committee member from Illinois and past president of the First Midwest Bank in Chicago recalled that, ‘Glass-Steagall was always the wall that kept consumer banking away from big risks. Bill Clinton broke down that wall when he signed its repeal in 1999.'” Gizzi continued quoting Lynch to the effect that that the repeal of Glass-Steagall “exposed consumer banking to higher risks, as some people sought to make as much money as possible.”

Lynch had several decades experience as an employee and then as an officer in regional banks in the Midwest. He rose to become President of the Midwest Bank of Illinois, which is now a $11 billion in assets community bank with offices in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa.

In his biography on LinkedIn, Lynch, a strong Trump supporter, cited among his publications, the “Reinstate Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 Amendment to 2016 GOP Platform,” which he defined in his own words as:

“In order to prevent another collapse of our U.S. banking system and a major recession or depression, I propose reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, enacted in response to the failure of 5,000 U.S. banks and the Great Depression, prohibiting commercial banks from engaging in high-risk investment banking, insurance and other non-banking businesses. It was repealed under President Clinton in 1999 at the request of Citibank and ultimately led to the 2008 financial collapse and a recession, as well as the taxpayer funded bailout…. Crooked Hillary would definitely vote against my proposal because she is ‘owned’ by the megabanks and Wall Street.”

Within one week, on July 20, an agitated American Banker Magazine, ran the banner headline, “Is Trump the Community Banking Candidate?”

The LaRouche movement’s unflinching multi-year fight for restoration of Roosevelt’s Glass-Steagall has generated the force and context for Lynch and others to come forward with this proposal. This extends considerably beyond Trump, as the basis for enactment of LaRouche’s Four Laws for restarting, and a revolutionary transformation of the U.S. and world economy.

Between October and early November, a great paradox has arisen in the United States. On the one hand, we hear of millions of Americans who have fallen into disgust and even despair over the Presidential campaigns and the candidacies. But at the same time, there is a tangible presentiment in the nation that the time is coming very soon, when America will be able to turn its focus and its whole effort to the “affirmative aims and needs of human individual and social life,”— with never a backward glance to the grief and shame of the Bush-Obama years.

You probably never expected this, and you may not be able to explain it, but it is undeniable once you have sensed it. Its cause is not in the candidacies or the campaigns,— far from it. Its cause is in the very human spirit itself; its cause is the “divine spark” in man, which is speaking through the hope which so many of our citizens suddenly find they share,— apparently in spite of everything.

Percy Shelley understood all of this when he wrote his “In Defense of Poetry” and other works. So did the German “Poet of Freedom” Friedrich Schiller.

Does this unexpected spring of hope correspond to reality? Is the possibility really there, for the rebirth of something even better than the America of John Kennedy, which led the world upwards to the exploration of boundless space, and at the same time toward the overcoming of poverty, underdevelopment and war on earth? The answer is yes: the hope is valid; it is not deceiving you. Why this is true, is a profound question,— but the answer can be quickly summarized by noting that the laws of the creative human mind, that is the laws created by our reason, are the laws of the universe.

There are no guarantees, and tremendous, coordinated moral and intellectual effort will be required, comparable to total war, but the opportunity is there at this late date to save our nation.

An important part of the environment of the change in mentality of our citizens, has been the truly heroic leadership shown by Russia’s President Putin (whatever Hillary Clinton may say) and the leadership of China. They have led their nations up from out of the mud towards the stars during our lifetimes. Russia was a wreckage after the so-called “reforms” of the 1990s; look where it is now. China has lifted 800 million of its citizens out of poverty. But they are not bossing others around or aspiring for hegemony; instead, they strive for cooperation in equality. China’s international proposal for the New Silk Road is an international development plan twelve times the size of the Marshall Plan, in which 70 nations are participating, with many more to come. And without Putin’s role, there would be no hope of suppressing the terrorism which Barack Obama has fed in the Middle East with Hillary Clinton’s help.

A critical element in conditioning the current upsurge of hope among Americans, and one which will be required for its success, is the two-year old “Manhattan Project” of Lyndon LaRouche. Through Manhattan, LaRouche has inspired key networks throughout the nation in behalf of the original principles on which Manhattan’s Alexander Hamilton created our nation, as expressed anew in LaRouche’s “Four Laws.” In briefest summary, these include reinstatement of Franklin Roosevelt’s Glass-Steagall Act; creation of a new Bank of the United States; a national credit policy committed to increased productivity of labor; and a crash program for controlled fusion energy, with the revival of NASA and the U.S. space program killed by Barack Obama.

Although no one has even pointed out the reality of this new national mood until today, candidate Donald Trump nevertheless responded to it in his own way during late October, when he publicly endorsed Glass-Steagall, and called for a revival of NASA and its commitment to deep space exploration. He also pointed out that a President Hillary Clinton would launch World War III against Russia, as Lyndon LaRouche has long shown.

We point this out because of its clear relevance, but never imagine that pulling the lever for a candidate will save our nation at this late date; it will not. The inexplicable hope which you have suddenly felt with so many others, is an inner whisper to prod you to do what you must do; there may not be another chance.

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Sir John Chilcot, author of the Chilcot Report that gave damning proof of Tony Blair’s duplicity in bringing Great Britain into the war against Iraq, testified in Parliament for the first time since his report was released last July. Speaking to the Commons liaison committee, he was just as damning in his testimony as in the report.

He accused Blair’s cabinet of having been a “sofa government” that was under Blair’s “psychological dominance.” Furthermore, Blair did not consult his “sofa government” ministers on crucial decisions which were Blair’s personal preferences. Chilcot added that on several occasions between 2002 and 2007, “things were decided without reference to cabinet,” including the legal basis on which the U.K. went to war in 2003 against Iraq.

One of the couch potatoes was apparently then-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Chilcot said that when he asked Straw, why the cabinet had not “provided more of a challenge” to Blair or demanded more information, “The answer that came back was that Tony Blair had, as leader of the opposition and in government, rescued his party from a dire predicament. I had the sense from Straw’s answer that [blair] had achieved a personal and political dominance, a sheer psychological dominance. He [blair] had been right. Was he not right this time? That’s what I took from Mr. Straw’s evidence.”

Another point raised was a private note sent on 28 July 2002 in which Blair promised then-President George W Bush: “I will be with you, whatever.” Chilcot said the cabinet was never told about the note which committed the government to “whatever.” Only Jonathan Powell — Blair’s chief of staff — and David Manning — the U.K.’s ambassador to the U.S. — were aware of its existence. “Both tried to persuade him [blair] not to use those form of words. But he did,” Chilcot said. Straw found out about it only after it had been issued.

Rather than being couch potatoes, Chilcot said, ministers should voice their disagreements or views. “It’s vital for serious decisions to be recorded in the public archive, not for immediate release necessarily, but they should be written down. If someone is in serious disagreement, the reason for that decision, and the fact of it, should be recorded. [this] allows different voices to be heard.”

While saying that Saddam Hussein’s government was “barbaric and beyond any kind of defense,” Chilcot said, “That didn’t amount either in international law or other grounds for the invasion of a sovereign country. We haven’t been in that business since 1945.” (Chilcot did not mention Egypt in 1956.)

While Chilcot absolved Blair of the charge that he had deliberately set out to “deceive parliament and the public,” Blair nonetheless was to blame, in that he used his “very real powers of advocacy and persuasion” in support of a dubious case for war. Furthermore, he said that Blair “overestimated” his ability to influence U.S. decision-making on Iraq, and that it was clear by the end of 2002 that the military timetable had taken control of the diplomatic process.

He also claimed that Blair, on the eve of his speech to Parliament in March 2003, seeking approval for invasion, genuinely believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The government’s joint intelligence committee had wrongly told him this. Nonetheless, at that point there was “no evidence” that Saddam intended to deploy such weapons against U.K. interests, and there was no imminent threat. In fact, it turned out that Saddam had secretly destroyed his chemical and biological weapons after the Gulf War and before international inspectors were allowed back into the country.

When asked who was most responsible for the Iraq disaster, Chilcot answered: Blair, Straw, and Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon. Blair and Straw were more experienced and therefore most at fault.

When asked what was the most important finding of the inquiry, he said, “Failure to exert and exercise sufficient collective responsibility for a very big decision.”

Andrew Tyrie, the chair of the Treasury select committee, said the parliamentary hearing had been a useful exercise. “Sir John has started to put the final pieces of his conclusions into the public domain,” he said. Tyrie added that Blair “did not feel the need to be constrained by facts when putting his case to Parliament.”

A revolution is taking place in the world today. It started in Asia, where it is already far advanced, as China, Russia, India, and increasingly also Japan, are working together to achieve a development process for the world as a whole, based on science, innovative technologies, vast regional infrastructure projects, leaps forward in space exploration, and real development of the impoverished nations of Africa, Ibero-America and Asia. As you will see in the reports below, this day, like nearly every day in this new paradigm, has seen an incredible level of new collaborative projects launched by these Eurasian nations, among themselves and reaching out through joint development projects in the developing sector.        

The impact of this revolution is now, finally, reaching into the United States, after making significant breakthroughs in Europe through the New Silk Road projects coming from China, reaching into both Eastern and Western Europe. This shift taking place in the U.S. can be traced directly to the work of Lyndon LaRouche.

As the presidential election campaign developed over the past year, everything that Obama had touched began to crumble. Obamacare was exposed as the disaster LaRouche had warned it would be. The Nobel Peace Prize recipient has been exposed as a mass killer aligned with terrorist forces across Southwest Asia to overthrow sovereign governments. The President who was going to clean up the mess on Wall Street left by George Bush is exposed as having refused to prosecute a single banker, even as the crimes of Wells Fargo, the drug money laundering of HSBC, and the return of a speculative derivative bubble at JP Morgan Chase and all the other too-big-to-fail banks stand clearly before the public eye. The President who pledged to bring Hope and Change has created the biggest drug epidemic in the nation’s history, to a youth generation which has lost hope for a future, and to millions of working people who have lost hope, choosing drugs or suicide or both.   

And Hillary Clinton chose to campaign on that record, adding to it the fact that she was anxious to start a military confrontation with Russia, which is obvious to all but the blind to be a rush to global nuclear annihilation.        

But things have changed over the past weeks. Many people questioned LaRouche’s refusal to choose sides in this election, but rather to insist that his supporters work instead to introduce serious policies into a campaign that was almost entirely a disgusting, pornographic cat fight. This had to begin with Glass Steagall, he insisted, to shut down the Wall Street casino economy and restore Hamiltonian credit policies to the nation. This meant directing federal credit, through a restored National Bank of the United States to replace the bankrupt Federal Reserve system, to fund a science-driven economic transformation of the nation, centered on the revival of NASA’s space exploration, fusion power development, and a vast hard and soft infrastructure program — what he calls his Four Laws.        

Now Donald Trump has called for adoption of the 21st Century Glass Steagall act, denouncing Hillary’s (and Obama’s) subservience to Wall Street. He has gone beyond proposing cooperation with Russia to crush ISIS, which was notable but inadequate, to sound the warning that electing Hillary will mean a nuclear war.        
Both these issues are identified internationally with Lyndon LaRouche. His effort to introduce reality into the campaign has had an impact, which can and must prevent war and begin the reform of the collapsing trans-Atlantic economies.        

LaRouche today addressed this new potential, but warned that this is not a time to “let our voices drift downward,” to fall for tailing after a candidate, but to escalate the fight for a revolutionary policy shift in America, and to be ready to act on November 9th, no matter who wins the election, to implement Glass Steagall and the Four Laws.        

At a moment like this, when the world will change dramatically for better or for ill in the immediate period ahead, there is no room for pessimism or pragmatism, and no reason to allow fear to deter us. The new paradigm is spreading across the world. America, in restoring its founding principles, can also end the British imperial “unipolar world” mentality that has taken hold in our nation, and join in building a world of sovereign nations working together for the common aims of mankind.

What kind of fraud was President Obama’s ARRA — the “Stimulus Act of 2009” — which was supposed to be focused on helping states and cities recover employment and construction? Infrastructure spending by states and cities in the United States, usually reported as part of “municipal public construction,” has been completely stagnant for 10 years, according to Commerce Department data reported by the Wall Street Journal Oct. 27. And, in fact, it is actually lower now than in 2009 before the ARRA took effect.

The problem there, the newspaper reported, is state and city tax revenues, which have never recovered from the 2008 crash. Inflation-adjusted tax revenues are lower than pre-2008 in 21 states. Nationally, municipal revenues are still falling, standing 0.6% lower than 2015 through the first nine months of the year.

But at the Federal level, construction spending is also falling. In September it was 0.2% below September 2015; public construction, which has been steadily falling, dropped by another 0.9% in September.

What we require for the new water, power, and transport infrastructure the states need, is a Hamiltonian national bank; it can purchase the new infrastructure bonds of the states as they participate in national infrastructure projects like high-speed rail corridors being funded by Hamiltonian national credit.

The “infrastructure bank” proposals of candidates Trump and Clinton do not meet this standard. Clinton’s (actually designed by Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York) simply gives companies which are holding their funds “offshore” to avoid taxes, a huge tax break to bring them back. The very low-ball taxation of these repatriated funds would be used, in this scheme, to fund infrastructure — completely dependent on the companies’ decisions on how much money to repatriate, and when. Trump’s “national infrastructure bank” would not be national at all, but entirely privately capitalized (also with tax breaks) and owned.

Obama’s scattershot and scatterbrained “Stimulus Act” degraded the very process of thinking about the projects most important for the future of the economy, nation, and human race.

A Hamiltonian national credit bank, as called for in Lyndon LaRouche’s “four economic laws to save the nation,” requires national leadership direction of credit into the most technologically advanced “infrastructure missions.”

What kind of fraud was President Obama’s ARRA — the “Stimulus Act of 2009” — which was supposed to be focused on helping states and cities recover employment and construction? Infrastructure spending by states and cities in the United States, usually reported as part of “municipal public construction,” has been completely stagnant for 10 years, according to Commerce Department data reported by the Wall Street Journal Oct. 27. And, in fact, it is actually lower now than in 2009 before the ARRA took effect.

The problem there, the newspaper reported, is state and city tax revenues, which have never recovered from the 2008 crash. Inflation-adjusted tax revenues are lower than pre-2008 in 21 states. Nationally, municipal revenues are still falling, standing 0.6% lower than 2015 through the first nine months of the year.

But at the Federal level, construction spending is also falling. In September it was 0.2% below September 2015; public construction, which has been steadily falling, dropped by another 0.9% in September.

What we require for the new water, power, and transport infrastructure the states need, is a Hamiltonian national bank; it can purchase the new infrastructure bonds of the states as they participate in national infrastructure projects like high-speed rail corridors being funded by Hamiltonian national credit.

The “infrastructure bank” proposals of candidates Trump and Clinton do not meet this standard. Clinton’s (actually designed by Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York) simply gives companies which are holding their funds “offshore” to avoid taxes, a huge tax break to bring them back. The very low-ball taxation of these repatriated funds would be used, in this scheme, to fund infrastructure — completely dependent on the companies’ decisions on how much money to repatriate, and when. Trump’s “national infrastructure bank” would not be national at all, but entirely privately capitalized (also with tax breaks) and owned.

Obama’s scattershot and scatterbrained “Stimulus Act” degraded the very process of thinking about the projects most important for the future of the economy, nation, and human race.

A Hamiltonian national credit bank, as called for in Lyndon LaRouche’s “four economic laws to save the nation,” requires national leadership direction of credit into the most technologically advanced “infrastructure missions.”