Author: Alicia

Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang made abundantly clear the Chinese view of the “sustainable development agenda”, which may have ruffled a few feathers of the Green lobby.

“China is among the first countries to submit its own plan to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The foundation of sustainable development is development itself. Sustainability has no meaning without development,”  Li said. “Many problems around the world are caused by the lack of development, including poverty, the refugee crisis, wars and conflicts, as well as terrorism. We need to find the root causes of these problems and solve them through development.” And it must be “sustainable in all directions,” he added, i.e., for the developed as well as the developing world. “It must be inclusive and interconnected. Otherwise growth will be stalled,” Li said. He also referenced the recently concluded Hangzhou Summit, chaired by China, which put forward “a win-win policy for sustainable goals”.

Li also expressed his concerns about the growing tendency toward protectionism, with a perhaps not-so-veiled critique of the campaign of Donald Trump in the U.S.: “Globalization faces strong headwinds,” he said. Li said that China would continue its policy of opening up. But to advance sustainable development, “we must uphold the principles of the UN Charter,” and “support the leading role of the UN in global affairs.”

“In resolving crises, the world must rely on dialogue instead of alliances,” Li said. “It has been proven over time that military solutions can only lead to more hatred and violence. No one will win this way. All warring sides in regional conflicts should abandon the zero-sum mentality, solve their conflict through dialogue, resolve their differences through negotiation and pursue reconciliation with the spirit of a forgiveness mentality.”

On Syria he called for a political solution to the conflict.

Deutsche Bank was fingered again as the riskiest bank in the world, in data released Tuesday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). According to the FDIC’s calculation (using the International Financial Reporting Standards or IFRS), Deutsche Bank’s leverage ratio — a lender’s equity capital measured against its assets — is the lowest of the rest of the world’s “Global Systemically Important Banks” (G-SIB’s). The FDIC includes the amount of derivatives which banks have on their books in its calculations of a leverage ratio, which shows how much equity capital a lender has against assets such as loans.

A low ratio means that a bank has less of a cushion if a crisis arises. DB’s leverage was estimated at a minuscule 2.68% as of June 30. That means DB has leveraged its capital 37:1 with debt, a slightly worse leverage position than that of Lehman Brothers in mid-2008 before its bankruptcy.

The risks of Deutsche “Bunk,” as Lyndon LaRouche has dubbed it, were the subject of a closed session of German Social Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing reports from two unnamed “people familiar with the matter.” Few details were reported, other than that participants discussed the coming U.S. Department of Justice fine and the bank’s financial reserves. Bloomberg contrasted that discussion, however, with the public silence maintained by the Merkel government on this looming blowout; Bloomberg’s sources say the topic was not raised at a closed-door session of the German parliament’s Finance Committee with Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble the same day.

DB may be the worst — and the IMF has called it the most dangerous spreader of bank risk in the world when it does blow up. But it is not the only “G-SIB” without much “cushion,” FDIC figures showed. Banco Santander of Spain, France’s BNP Paribas and Société Générale, Sweden’s Nordea Bank, Switzerland’s UBS, and Italy’s UniCredit were all under 4% — i.e., debt-leveraged by more than 25:1 — and Goldman Sachs was only a hair over, at 4.14%.

FDIC Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig warned, in releasing the FDIC’S Semi-Annual Update of the Global Capital Index, that “the degree of leverage within the global financial system increased in the first half of 2016,” as a whole. He made clear that U.S. big banks are included in that increased leverage—i.e., speculation.

“Although equity capital increased for U.S. G-SIBs in the first half of the year, assets increased more than proportionately, including a significant expansion of their derivatives books. The net effect was an increase in their overall leverage position,” he said. “Thus, as markets have recovered as central banks around the world continue quantitative easing programs, the incentives for increasing financial leverage have intensified.”

Obama has until this Friday, Sept. 23, to veto JASTA, and the expectation is that he will veto it at the last minute, hoping that he can get the Houses of Congress out of session before they can override his veto. His hope is that it will be easier for him to get the votes he needs against JASTA when Congress reconvenes after the elections; maybe he hopes that a President-Elect Hillary Clinton will join him in refusing justice to the victims of 9/11.

In reporting these possibilities, Politico of 9/16 and the New York Times of 9/15 note that Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has been in Washington lobbying Senators, and they finger Bob Corker (R-TN) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) as particularly likely to change their votes under pressure.

Lindsey Graham’s statements after meeting al-Jubeir are particularly corrupt and absurd; as former DIA official Patrick Lang has frequently written on his website, “‘Lawdy, Lawdy,’ said the Little Old Lady from South Carolina (LOLSC).”

To Politico, Graham said, “It’s a delicate situation. Nobody wants to be seen as opposing justice for the 9/11 families, but at the end of the day we have a world to manage, and right now the world is not being well-managed.”

Lyndon LaRouche responded, “That’s a good position; that’s the fact of the matter. It’s not well-managed at all. The reply is, obviously the President of the United States is screwing the thing up. The President of the United States is acting as a stooge to prevent any action.”

LOLSC Graham expanded on his orders from al-Jubeir to the New York Times. “They made it very clear to us that this is a hostile act. This is an odd situation. The 9/11 families are high on everyone’s list to be taken care of. But it comes at a time when Saudi Arabia believes America is not a reliable ally.”

LaRouche said: “We’ve expected Obama to intervene in this process. It’s inevitable. He’s a faker; he always lies; he lies in the courts, and he’s killing people. We’ve had a mass assassination of people in the Manhattan area, and therefore we cannot allow any overlooking of the law in the case of President Obama. Otherwise, people of the United States must be mobilized against this President. We want to get quick justice on this thing, and force the issue; don’t let them bounce around it. The President is prohibited from trying to suspend the proceedings.”

Congress must stay in session until it passes Glass-Steagall. If the Congress adjourns and only comes back in November, that leaves the entire month of September and October for the system to crash; Deutsche Bank is on the edge now, and our reports are that Deutsche Bank will be right in the middle of the agenda of the IMF annual meeting,— if Deutsche Bank and this system last that long.

“People by now know that the President is a foul ball who should not be trusted at all; they’ve seen enough of him. This President is not worth much of anything when it comes to honesty; he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with the kind of thievery he’s been doing. A lot of lives depend on that. We should bring this to a head stubbornly, because the issue is overripe for closure,” LaRouche concluded.

It was already abundantly clear that President Obama was moving to kill the U.S.-Russian agreement to defeat terrorism in Syria, before Saturday afternoon’s airstrike by U.S. coalition forces against a Syrian army position. The strike reportedly killed 62 Syrian soldiers and injured over 100 others, after which the Deir ez-Zor airport which the Syrian soldiers had been defending was quickly over-run by ISIS.         

On Friday night, Sept. 15, Obama blocked a planned UN Security Council meeting, where Council members were to have been briefed on the terms of U.S.-Russian agreement carefully hammered out by Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, so that the UNSC could pass a resolution supporting the plan, which would then carry the weight of the international community. The briefing had to be cancelled, when the U.S. refused to allow any details to be released. Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters that not only would the U.S. not allow the documents making up the agreement to be shared with the members of the Security Council, the U.S.  would “not even describe them in detail.” How can you ask Council members to support an agreement whose content they are not allowed to know? Churkin asked.

“Clearly there is lack of unity in the U.S. administration” on implementing the agreement, he noted.

Earlier on Friday, Obama called a meeting of his National Security Council to bash heads on Syria policy. The White House came out of that brawl with another sophistry aimed at killing the Syria accord. According to the short White House read-out on the discussion, “the President emphasized that the United States will not proceed with the next steps in the arrangement with Russia until we see seven continuous days of reduced violence and sustained humanitarian access.”

Originally it had been reported that the Kerry-Lavrov agreement was for a ceasefire to begin at midnight on Sept. 12, and seven days later, and if the ceasefire held, the U.S. and Russia would then establish a Joint Implementation Center (JIC) to undertake joint actions against the terrorists. With the deadline nearing, Obama’s formulation of “seven continuous days of reduced violence and sustained humanitarian access” laid the basis to indefinitely put off that JIC which Obama and his war party, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Pentagon spokesmen (not necessarily the U.S. military command) had opposed from the outset.

Speaking on Saturday to reporters in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where he was attending a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), President Putin pointed to the regime change policy behind the U.S. insistence on keeping the documents secret. The U.S., always arguing for openness and transparency, perhaps now insists on keeping the documents secret, “because it will become clear to the international community, as well as to the American and Russian people, who is not fulfilling which obligations,” said Putin. The U.S. is having difficulty separating “the so-called healthy part of the opposition from the semi-criminal and terrorist elements,” a problem stemming from “the desire to preserve the military potential in the fight against the lawful government of President Assad. However, this is a slippery slope…. Our U.S. partners seem to be again falling into the same trap they have fallen into so many times,” he said.

The Russian side continued to insist the U.S. must, and can change from its pro-terrorist policy. Lavrov and Kerry are to meet several times next week at the United Nations. Putin told reporters, albeit before the coalition airstrike on the Syrian soldiers, that “I would like to reiterate that we feel more positive than negative about this and we expect that the promises made by the U.S. administration will be kept.”

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

It is crucial that the General Assembly of the United Nations now convening in New York, build on the progress that the G20 Summit has achieved under China’s leadership. The course has been set toward a new financial architecture, and the chance is greater than ever that all nations can participate in the building of the New Silk Road on the basis of win-win cooperation, and that the productivity of the world economy will rise on the basis of innovation, while poverty and the consequences of war are overcome. The main problem, however, is that the West continues to cling to the status quo of a uni-polar world and the neo-liberal financial system, although both of those objectives have long been unachievable. The rise of Asia signifies that one nation cannot set the rules, but that solutions must be found through dialogue and negotiation. The neo-liberal system is in the throes of an existential crisis.

The first twin of globalization—the policy of regime-change and alleged humanitarian interventions—has cost the lives of millions of people, brought untold suffering to millions more, destroyed entire regions, created the breeding grounds for the spread of terrorism, and set off huge waves of refugees. The wars against Iraq and Afghanistan alone, according to the study of Professor Neta Crawford of Brown University, have cost five trillion dollars—and for what result?

The second twin of globalization—the system of maximum profit for the TBTF banks, which are supposedly “too big to be allowed to fail”—has led to an unbearable gap between rich and poor. And if certain banks have to pay the full sum of their fines for criminal methods, they must declare bankruptcy because their capital base is insufficient. Hence, a new meltdown threatens, with even more catastrophic consequences than the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, now that central bank instruments are exhausted and no longer effective.

In that context, two reports released in Great Britain offer an extraordinary opportunity to re-assess and correct the current policy. After the Chilcot Report, which laid the blame on Tony Blair for the illegal Iraq war which was built on lies, a commission of the British Parliament has levelled no less scathing charges against former Prime Minister David Cameron for the war in Libya, which was carried out on “erroneous assumptions” and led to “political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL in North Africa.”

On the role of the United States, the report states that “The United States was instrumental in extending the terms of Resolution 1973 beyond the imposition of a no-fly zone to include the authorisation of ‘all necessary measures’ to protect civilians. In practice, this led to the imposition of a ‘no-drive zone’ and the assumed authority to attack the entire Libyan Government command and communications network.”

That same overall review of the current policy should, of course, include the implications of the 28 pages of the official Joint Congressional Inquiry Report, which deals with the circumstances of the attacks of September 11, 2001, as well as the JASTA bill, which necessitate a completely new investigation.

In light of the horrendous suffering this failed policy has caused: the millions of dead and injured; the traumatized children and soldiers (including in the nations waging war); the destruction of cities, villages, infrastructure and irreplaceable cultural wealth; it is not only appropriate, but a moral obligation for the countries that took part in these wars in the different “coalitions of the willing,” to examine the political process in their parliaments and to fully participate in the reconstruction of the regions that have been devastated. This will not bring the dead back to life, but the admission of guilt and a genuine change of policy towards development would give the people living there today hope for a future.

The status quo cannot be maintained. As a result of both twins of globalization, there has been an enormous loss of trust among the population in the trans-Atlantic world. Right-wing populist and right-extremist parties are massively gaining strength; the conditions of the 1930s threaten to reappear in a new form; the European Union is crumbling; and the refugee crisis will not be solved by securing the external EU borders, but only relocated and removed from the news. The U.S. economy is collapsing, while the society is more than ever torn and overtaken by violence. Either this process will lead to an escalation of the confrontation with Russia and China, and to the extermination of mankind in a great war, or the leading politicians in the West will have the moral integrity to correct the errors of the past.

The Solution

To come back to the positive proposition in the beginning of this appeal, the course has been set toward a way out of this crisis of civilization since the G20 summit. Not only has China presented a new level of cooperation based not on geopolitics, but rather on a policy in the mutual interest of all, it has also pledged to industrialize Africa and other low-income countries, an approach that could both solve the refugee crisis and eliminate the terrorist environment. Clearly, the extension of the New Silk Road to the Middle East and Africa both requires and will bring about growth rates of 7 to 10%.

And just as promptly, the Club of Rome stepped in with a new report under the cynical title in the German translation of “One Percent Is Enough,” which would lead in consequence to population reduction, a fascist policy for which the Club of Rome is infamous. The UN recently stressed that Africa needs a growth rate of at least 7-8%. When one of the authors of the Club of Rome report, the Norwegian Jorgen Randers, comes out with the absurd statement, “My daughter is the most dangerous animal in the world,” because she consumes 30 times more energy than a girl in a developing country, it serves to show on what image of man the Club of Rome bases its argument, i.e. on a bestial one.

But man, in contrast to all other creatures, is able to use his creative potential to continually discover new insights into the laws of the universe; this is called scientific progress. The unlimited process of perfecting the human mind has a correspondence in the laws of the physical universe, which develops to ever higher energy-flux densities. We are not in a closed system on the Earth—as the Club of Rome and similar organizations claim—rather, our planet is an integral part of the Solar System, the galaxy and the universe, about which space research is discovering more and more. This research yields many advantages for Earth itself, and it is therefore fantastic that China announced at the G20 summit, that it would share with developing countries the most advanced research results for their space and lunar exploration projects.

Mankind has arrived at a crossroads. If we continue to walk the well-trodden paths with a policy of “more of the same,” the world threatens to come apart. If, on the contrary, we can agree on the common aims of mankind—an economic and financial order that serves the well-being of all mankind, and which makes possible a decent life for every person on this Earth; the securing of raw materials and energy through higher technologies such as thermonuclear fusion; the exploration of space to safeguard our planet and a renaissance of classical cultures—then we will be able to usher in a new, better era in the history of our species.

The General Assembly of the United Nations is the fitting place, where the new paradigm of our one mankind, based on that which comes before all the differences among nations, must be established and celebrated.

President Barack Obama’s continuing threat to veto the JASTA bill is a clear reminder that the President of the United States is in reality an agent of the British system, and he will do whatever he is told by the British Crown—the American people be damned. Lyndon LaRouche warned today that no one should expect Obama to do the right thing by signing the JASTA bill into law and letting the justice system deal with the Saudi Monarchy, the facilitators of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. “Obama will wiggle and dodge the issue until the last moment—and then he will veto JASTA—unless there is such an outpouring of pressure from the American people that it leaves him no choice,” LaRouche declared.”After all, Obama is a British agent and he will act accordingly.”

LaRouche added, “Obama is a faker and he must be smoked out.” Obama is being propped up by a string of Big Lies, peddled by the US mainstream media, that repeats the Administration’s lies, including the insane claim that the US economy has improved, wages are rising, unemployment is at a low point, etc. This is all lies, as any honest American in the lower 90 percent income bracket knows. Some 93.5 million working age Americans are not even counted in the labor force. The Big Lie campaign propping up Obama can be smashed. The US has become a country of unbounded statistical fakery.

Just as JASTA must be passed now, whether by forcing Obama’s hand or by an overwhelming vote in the Senate and the House that overrides an Obama veto, so too Glass Steagall must be passed into law immediately—before the total disintegration of the trans-Atlantic financial system occurs, which could be any time. Don’t count on Elizabeth Warren to lead this fight—she is too compromised by her partisan desires to defend Obama and Hillary Clinton. “Just do it!” LaRouche said again today.

The actions taken this week by the British House of Commons, which dumped David Cameron from his parliamentary seat for his role in the Libya war, all based on lies, is a wake-up call for the same action to be taken by the US Congress against Barack Obama. He must be kicked out of office now.

Among Obama’s many crimes is the brutal way he terrorized and then used Hillary Clinton, particularly around the Libyan invasion and assassination of Qaddafi. That action, where Hillary Clinton fully caved in to Obama and was never the same after, was the start of the Obama war drive against Russia and China. LaRouche called it at the time of the Qaddafi assassination and everything that followed from those 2011 events has proven the case. The danger of war against Russia and China has now reached a point where all of mankind is in danger, everyday Obama remains in office with the power to start a thermonuclear world war. And as events of the last week have made publicly clear, Hillary Clinton is broken down and she needs to get out.

The American people desperately need help and serious consideration of their plight. Instead, the Club of Rome has resurfaced, to demand a global genocide, under the guise of their claim that “one percent growth” is all that the world needs and the New Silk Road program should be scrapped. The Club of Rome remains the same genocidal outfit that launched the original Limits to Growth Malthusian campaign back in 1972. At that point, Lyndon LaRouche and the LaRouche movement took the lead in exposing the Club of Rome as a gang of murderous liars, whose real agenda was to kill billions of people—the same identical agenda as that of the British Monarchy, most clearly expressed by Royal Consort Prince Philip.

That policy must now finally be put to rest.

President Barack Obama has been soundly denounced for destroying the U.S. image globally. Ambassador Chas Freeman granted an interview to Sputnik, in which he said the U.S. is less safe and more hated globally as the result of policies pursued since 9/11.

“The United States is less safe than it was when it began its ill-considered military campaigns in Asia and Africa. The discredit this has brought to American democracy has greatly diminished its appeal abroad.” Freeman continued, “It kicked off an American-led war on militant Islam that has spawned contempt for the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law both at home and abroad, and justified the curtailment of the freedoms and the erosion of the personal security of Americans that it is ostensibly directed at protecting.” He linked the war policies of Bush and Obama to the collapse of the U.S. economy, telling Sputnik, “The diversion of American resources to foreign adventures rather than to meeting domestic human and infrastructure needs has made America a shabbier, less competitive society.” Freeman cited Obama’s drone wars for having “spread anti-Western terrorism with global reach to new corners of the globe.”

Freeman’s comments were further echoed by Martin Sieff, writing for UPI, who denounced Obama’s behavior at the G20 meeting as sowing the seeds for an economic disaster and thermonuclear war.

“At the G20 he jumped deep into the pit of strategic overextension, committing the United States to ongoing dangerous confrontations with the other greatest global powers—Russia and China… Weak men bluster and bluff, then imagine they are strong. That is what Obama did at the Group of 20 meeting… Where he saw himself as a proud man standing tall on the world stage, others saw a blustering phony, who boasts of a Nobel Prize he never deserved, never earned. Obama stood up — in his own imagination — to Russia and China. In reality, he just plunged ahead on a course toward U.S. economic collapse through an endless clash with China. Even worse, he took another step on the road toward thermonuclear confrontation and world war with Russia. Obama’s conduct at Hangzhou will not be scrutinized or even criticized by the worshipful U.S. media, but it plunges the United States and the American people far further down the road towards global war and existential crisis under his successor.”

Philippines President Duterte continues his clear-headed dismantling of Obama’s military impositions on his country, implemented under the willing tool President Aquino. Following Duterte’s declaration on Monday that all remaining U.S. Special Forces in Mindanao must leave (the U.S. has not yet received such an official order), he has now announced the cancellation of Obama’s deal with Aquino to carry out provocative joint naval patrols of “contested waters” in the South China Sea.

“We will not join any expedition or patrolling the sea. I will not allow it, because I do not want my country to be in involved in a hostile act,” Duterte said in a speech during the 48th anniversary of the 250th Philippine Airlift Wing at the Villamor Air Base in Pasay City, as reported in the Philippines Inquirer.

“I just want to patrol our territorial waters,” he said. “We do not go into a patrol or join any other army from now, because I do not want trouble,” Duterte said. “I do not want to ride gung-ho style there with China or with America. I just want to patrol our territorial waters. Territory is limited to the 12-mile limit. That is ours.”

Bloomberg reported that Duterte, in a televised speech Tuesday before military officers in Manila, said that two unidentified countries had agreed to give the Philippines a 25-year soft loan to buy military equipment. But he also announced that Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and technical people in the armed forces would visit China and Russia “and see what’s best.”

Reiterating his insistence that the Philippines would not engage in military provocations with the U.S. against China, he said the Philippines needs propeller-driven planes that it can use against insurgents and to fight terrorists in Mindanao. He said he wanted to buy arms “where they are cheap and where there are no strings attached, and it is transparent. I don’t need jets, F-16 — that’s of no use to us. We don’t intend to fight any country.” 

At a conference sponsored by the Florida Bulldog Thursday night in Davie, Florida, the audience heard a chilling account of the terrorist attack on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001—and the coverup of those events— from Sharon Premoli, who worked on the 80th floor of the World Trade Center North Tower on the day of the attack and who barely survived that day; from Sen. Bob Graham, the Chairman, in 2002, of the Joint Congressional Committee that investigated the 9/11 attacks; from Sean Carter, one of the attorneys representing the 9/11 families suing the government of Saudi Arabia and others involved in the attack; from Bulldog founder Dan Christensen, and from Tom Julin, the attorney for the Bulldog who is litigating the groundbreaking Freedom of Information Act suit that could lead to the disclosure of some 80,000 pages of government documents about the investigation of hijackers and their supporters in Sarasota, FL. The panel was the first time that such a group gathered in one place. Among the points made was the necessity for Congress to pass immediately, the JASTA bill that would allow the 9/11 families to sue the government of Saudi Arabia.

The Bulldog is the independent investigative news agency that conducted a breakthrough investigation of the Saudi hijackers who lived in Sarasota prior to 9/11, and who had connections to a Saudi couple who suddenly fled the United States two weeks after the attacks.   The panel discussed how the FBI withheld thousands of pages of documents relating to the hijackers and the mystery Saudi couple, and how the FBI never even informed the official Congressional Committee investigation of the existence of these documents.  Graham, the Senator and former Governor of Florida disclosed how he was ordered by a high level FBI official to never call a Florida FBI who he was trying to question about the hijackers activities. Graham spoke at a Washington, D.C. forum just several weeks ago, urging the passage of JASTA so that the families could pursue the Saudi role in court, as is their right under U.S. law.

The compelling presentation by Ms. Premoli, who is a leading activist for the 9/11 families, was delivered by voice recording, reported the Miami Herald, which wrote: “She detailed how she escaped from the building and how a police officer gave her his oxygen mask. ‘The ground rocked and the roar from the clouds was indescribable. My lungs were packed with dust. My legs were rubber when I realized I was on top of a bloody body. I don’t know the name of the police officer or fire fighter but I owe them my life.'”