Author: Alicia

Below is an excerpt of remarks made by American Statesman Lyndon LaRouche, Thursday, March 31, 2016, during his weekly, live Fireside Chat event, broadcast on larouchepac.com.

“I would say that right now we’re going through, not a simple place of what we’ve had before, but we are going into a more deeply rooted crisis situation, throughout not only the United States, but throughout much of the planet. We’re on the edge of a threatened launching of war against China, and implicitly also Putin, China in particular—and the threats are becoming very serious.”

“Installing the THAAD system has extended far beyond the defense needs against North Korea, and will cause direct harm to China’s strategic and security interests, as well as the regional balance.” —HONG LEI, Spokesman, Chinese Foreign Ministry

“If these threats were to be carried out, the immediate effect would be a general thermonuclear war fought throughout the entire planet.
“That’s what the facts are, because if Putin were knocked out, and if China was being hit directly, by Obama’s directions, you would have the worst general warfare on the planet Earth that has ever occurred, that we have ever experienced. That’s where we are.”

“We are prepared to fight and win if we have to … our focus will expand from assurance to deterrence, including measures that vastly improve our overall readiness. To the east and north we face a resurgent and aggressive Russia, and as we have continued to witness these last two years, Russia continues to seek to extend its influence on its periphery and beyond.” —GEN. PHILIP BREEDLOVE, NATO Commander

“If we were not to intervene, now, and Obama were to act as he intends to act right now… —as a matter of fact, Obama has already set into motion a general thermonuclear war throughout the planet. Now, the question whether he’ll succeed in doing that or not, is another question, but the fact is, he’s doing it. And he’s putting military forces, a lot of it, into it. And that’s the intention.”

“As always happens in a changing world economic order, the country that is losing its leadership tries to unleash a world war for control over the periphery…. The State Department and the White House [continue] continue to look at the world through the prism of both the Cold War and British confrontations with Russia and Germany in the nineteenth century, and now the U.S. is unleashing another world war.” —SERGEY GLAZYEV, Economist and advisor to President Putin

“As of now, the trans-Atlantic community, of the planet, is a disaster. Everything that we had beforehand has just crashed; we’re losing everything.

“So we have two things: Get Obama out of there, right away. Right away! Leave in him in there, he’s going to go for a thermonuclear war! So you’ve got to get him out of there. Once you do that, take that step, then you have to take reconstructionist kinds of measures, and those measures are possible, they’re feasible.

“And then, once you’ve thrown out Obama out of office, you’re going to have to do some reorganizing of the political structure of the Congress and so forth; and you’re going to have to find people who are willing to step forward, being able to look at the things that we could do, or could have done. That would mean we would go with the kind of program which is just exactly like is being by China! The China that Obama intends to destroy.

“So what we would want to do, is simply take the same thing that we had with the space program; revive the space program, because we’re going to have to do a lot of spatial discovery work, on space work. And it will be very important and very rich, and without doing it, without using it, you’re not going to succeed. So you have no alternative on this one. But if an enterprise like that has that kind of a commitment and is prepared to present it, I would say, “praise them. we need ’em!”
And back ’em up.

After the systematic campaigns launched against two of the important leaders of the BRICS group, South Africa’s Jacob Zuma and Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff—not to mention the non-stop vilification of Russian President Vladimir Putin—the City of London and the Obama Administration are now targeting key BRICS leader, China’s Xi Jinping. In an article in this week’s Economist entitled “Beware the Cult of Xi,” the Economist compares the Chinese leader with Mao Zedong during the worst period of the Cultural Revolution. “But Mr. Xi does not need to be as extreme as Mao for his concentration of power to cause harm,” the Economist writes. “He has been fighting dissent with even more ruthlessness than he has been waging war on graft. Not since the dark days after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 has there been such a sweeping crackdown on critics of the party. Internet censors have been busy deleting messages posted on social media by outraged citizens in response to the vaccine scandal. These have included posts reminding Mr. Xi of his words in 2013 about the party’s fitness to rule. Police have also been investigating the appearance early in March of an anonymous letter on a government-affiliated website calling on Mr. Xi to resign (raising, among several transgressions, the personality cult and his stifling of the media).”

The reference to the “anonymous letter,” which included a not-so-subtle death threat to the Chinese leader, is quite revealing. While the letter is said to have been written, and may well have been, by Communist Party “dissidents,” it begs the question of the involvement of “outside interests,” i.e. British intelligence interests. The recent “defection” to the United States by Ling Jihua, a top official in the Hu Jintao government, whose return for trial for corruption has been demanded by the Chinese Government, has no doubt provided a good deal of intelligence to U.S. agencies and their allies about the internal situation in China and in the Communist Party, information which could well be utilized in such a “fifth column” operation as this.

The apocryphal letter, which was played up prominently on the front page of Friday’s Washington Post and London Guardian, just as Obama and Xi were meeting in Washington, includes the following threat: “For the party cause, for the long-term peace and stability of the country, and for your own personal safety and that of your family, we ask you to resign from all positions.” Lyndon LaRouche commented that such a threat from an obscure source is “not a respectable item,” and is clearly an Obama operation against the Chinese leader.

An article in the Financial Times by James Kynge indicates that it is not only the personality of Xi, but the underlying policy which is the target, namely the Belt and Road policy. The Kynge article describes the OBOR as a tool for China to become a global maritime power. The article targets in particular the lending of the large Chinese “policy banks.” Kynge points to recent studies by Grisons Peak, a London-based investment bank and Boston University’s Global Economic Governance Initiative, which document the expansion of lending by the Chinese banks, noting—with outrage—that in 2015 China had lent Ibero-American governments $29 billion while the World Bank and the IDB had cut their lending by 5 percent and 14 percent respectively. The article also reflects the concerns that had been expressed by IRI operative Olin Wethington, at a recent CSIS forum on the Belt and Road, who noted that such an article would soon appear in the Financial Times, and warned that the OBOR should be considered a major threat and that measures should be taken to thwart it.

President Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Obama-crafted Nuclear Security Summit, held in Washington, D.C. on March 28-29. The discussions were characterized as “frank and constructive,” indicating that there was little agreement on anything but peripheral issues like climate change and nuclear “security.”

Obama has used the presence of many world leaders at the summit to move forward his agenda for nuclear war. After a carefully choreographed meeting with Japan and South Korea in the morning, he then got together with the Chinese President. After reiterating U.S. “concerns” about human rights, he then went on
to assert the U.S primacy of human rights. Obama then started in on cyber security, which the Chinese have already agreed to cooperate on, saying that the U.S. would be carefully “monitoring” China’s compliance with the agreement. Obama then preached about the need for China to keep open the door to foreign businesses and to settle the maritime disputes in the South China Sea peacefully, adding that the U.S. had a “global interest” in maintaining freedom of navigation and overflight in the region.

President Xi no doubt listened patiently to the President’s tirade, and responded coolly but clearly, saying that China was “firmly opposed” to the missile defense plans of the U.S. in the region and considered it a destabilizing measure. He also said that he hoped the U.S. would maintain its declared policy of not involving itself in the South China Sea, and that China would accept no violation of Chinese territorial integrity under the cloak of “freedom of navigation”.

The same day, the Chinese Foreign Ministry, in reply to a question at the press conference in Beijing, reiterated China’s right to declare an ADIZ (air defense identification zone) in the area of the South China Sea. While such a declaration has not yet been issued, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Robert Work had warned on Wednesday that such an ADIZ would not be deemed legitimate by the U.S.

While the media in China will paint the meeting between the two presidents in bright colors, it is clear that the “nuclear clock” is now ticking more loudly than ever. Russian media such as Sputnik International seem tuned in to that reality, covering March 31 comments by Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujan regarding repeated U.S. naval incursions into China’s territorial waters in the South China Sea (“As for the US ships which came, I can only suggest they be careful”), under the following headline: “Beijing Ominous Threat to Washington Over South China Sea: `Be Careful’.”

The Obama Administration’s nuclear modernization plans fly in the face of Obama’s claim that he is reducing the role of nuclear weapons in national security strategy. It’s clear that the Pentagon, through these programs, particularly the B61-12 bomb and the Long Range Standoff (LRSO) cruise missile, is seeking nuclear weapons that are more tactically useful. Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists has been persistent in pointing this out. In a March 25 blog posting, Kristensen highlighted the questions that Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked in a recent hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee, during which administration officials tried but failed to convince her of the need for the LRSO.

NATO commander Gen. Philip Breedlove, Kristensen reports, argued in a separate hearing that the new B-21 bomber and its new cruise missile are needed to break anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) measures. This is so that the bombers can break through air defenses in order to get close enough to destroy their primary targets. Those A2/AD targets would include Russian S-400 air-defense, Russian Bastion-P coastal defense, and Chinese DF-10A land-attack missile launchers.

Frank Klotz, the director of the national Nuclear Security Administration, made a bumbling effort to convince Feinstein of this argument but failed miserably. “No you didn’t convince me,” she said.

Kristensen concludes by showing that the argument that the LRSO is needed to “bust” A2-AD defenses means that this is not a weapon of last resort, as nuclear weapons ought to be, but a weapon which brings nuclear use to the forefront of a conflict. This argument, Kristensen writes, “sounds eerily similar to the outrageous threats that Russian officials have made over the past several years to use nuclear weapons against NATO missile defense systems,” but instead, the US calls it “deterrence and reassurance.” Worse, still, the targets that they say the LRSO is to be used against, are reachable with conventional weapons that are currently in service. One flaw in Kristensen’s argument is that he takes at face value Obama’s promise, made in his speech in Prague in 2009, to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Kristensen thinks that the problem is that the nuclear warfighters in the Pentagon are out of control and need to be reined in, when in reality it’s Obama that is creating the conditions for nuclear confrontation with not only Russia, but China as well.

“We came in peace for all Mankind”

Plaque left by Apollo 11 on first Moon landing.

By Kesha Rogers

On March 25, 2016, Secretary of State John Kerry gave a press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Following a series of discussions with Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin, and building on a successful deployment led by President Putin in Syria, Kerry defined the key to what is needed to bring about a permanent cessation of hostilities. Secretary Kerry described his meeting with American astronaut Scott Kelly, who had just spent over 340 days in space with his Russian counterpart, Cosmonaut ​Mikhail Kornienko. Kerry said he spoke with the two astronauts, one American and one Russian, who were working together to study the effects of long­term spaceflight on the human body. In his remarks, Kerry presented what he encountered in his meeting with the two astronauts as a critical example of what is required to bring about collaboration in international diplomacy, bringing nations to work together in collaboration to solve common problems, and strengthening our understanding of who we are as human beings, just as we are doing on the International Space Station.

Can we bring about such collaboration and peace among nations?

The obvious answer is, we can, provided that we act to rid ourselves once and for all of a dying British Empire and remove Obama from the Presidency, now. Our U.S. space program, NASA, must be restored to its rightful place as the spark-plug for a national recovery. This must be done as a key to bringing the United States into collaboration with the nations of Russia and China, along with other nations, thus defining a new paradigm for mankind. That new paradigm is being demonstrated by China’s promoting of the New Silk Road development corridors, and cooperation throughout the world, and by its leadership in space, exemplified by the mission to land a rover on the far side of the moon,— embarking on new discoveries, and doing what no nation has yet accomplished. President Obama’s attack on NASA’s exploration programs, has been a complete and utter frontal attack on our nation’s future. The question is, how long will you allow this murderous policy to continue?

What Secretary Kerry said is right: the basis for global cooperation among nations in solving the problems we face ­­from ISIS terrorism to your once employed neighbor’s heroin-induced suicide should be modeled on the kind of peaceful collaboration that currently exists in certain aspects of the space program. This collaboration must be broadened to join with China’s leadership, and must embrace all other nations. Countries must actually unite in common cause against the bankrupt British Empire, and declare that those brave men and women who pioneered our human race off Earth a few generations ago, shall not have lived and died in vain. It is time to take the budgetary and political lid off real human progress, and live up to our destiny as mankind­ in ­the ­galaxy.

As a two-time nominee for U.S. Congress in the district representing Johnson Space Center, and later a candidate for U.S. Senate, I have continued to lead the fight against the continued dismantling of the U.S. space program. I hereby call upon the international space community to heed this call for nations to collaborate politically as we do in space, and pull down the barriers to this progress once and for all. That is why I am happy to announce the initiative for an international space policy roundtable on this subject, to be held in Houston, Texas near the Johnson Space Center. I call upon astronauts, scientists, engineers, and policy-makers to come together to participate in this indispensable discussion, to determine a unified mission for progress, and peaceful relations among nations.

Back up Kesha, contribute $25 today.

The Empire is in turmoil. Putin has defeated them in Syria, and is beginning to win over the sane elements of the populations in the West. Their banking system is
unraveling, with all the money printing they have unleashed unable to stop it, nor to stop the world from turning to China’s Silk Road and the new BRICS financial institutions for credit, for real development. Their culture is descending into satanism, as their leaders glory in killing—by drones, by hunger, by disease, and by suicide—even as the revived Confucian culture of China reaches out to the world with win-win development, classical education, and collaboration in space exploration.

The response to this Chinese and BRICS “threat” to their dying empire is to prepare for war—military and economic. US Deputy Defense Secretary Tony Blinken on Tuesday told a Washington forum that China simply must accept the massive US military buildup on their border, and “trust us” that we are not
targeting them. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman responded that the THAAD missiles being prepared for deployment in South Korea are not a “technical issue,” but a direct threat to peace and stability.

The Empire’s leading economic voice, the Financial Times of London, issued a similar threat through journalist Martin Wolf, who wildly claimed that China is responsible for the “Great Depression” that he sees coming soon, unless Beijing accepts the “cooperative management” of the Chinese economy!

A scholar from Australia, Tim Winter, objected to the distortion of China’s Silk Road process by western governments and the western press in a truthful analysis titled: “One Belt, One Road, One Heritage – Cultural Diplomacy Along the Silk Road.” The cultural, people-to-people aspect of China’s program, he said, must not be dismissed as merely China’s “soft power” effort to gain geopolitical influence. Rather, it is the crucial basis for the development process necessary to turn the world towards cooperation rather than confrontation. He quotes Xi Jinping from the recent Boao Forum, saying that “the Belt and Road will promote inter-civilizational exchanges to build bridges of friendship for our people, drive human development and safeguard the peace of the world.”

Such thinking is sneared at by most of the western elite, trained in the mechanical, mindless pseudo-thinking of the Empire’s Bertrand Russell, having forgotten (or suppressed) the creative spirit which gave birth to the United States, and which guided our greatest presidents. This spirit was largely snuffed out with the British assassination of John Kennedy, the launching of a colonial war in Asia, the gutting of America’s space program, and the British Opium War against the United States, resulting in the current President who delights in warfare and has legalized drugs.

The remoralization of the American and European populations is essential if war is to be avoided and the economy revived. The leadership in the West capable of achieving that task is represented by the EIR Special Report inspired by Lyndon and Helga Zepp LaRouche, The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge. The rest of the world recognizes the urgency of this policy, as it has now been translated into Chinese and Arabic, with several more languages in the works. The trans-Atlantic nations must follow this lead, face the fact that everything productive is being shut down around them, and join the New Silk Road.

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In the aftermath of Secretary of State John Kerry’s productive discussions with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin last week, both Kerry and President Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, have spoken of their respective thinking about the U.S.-Russia relationship.

In an interview aired today on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Kerry emphatically argued for the necessity of U.S.-Russian dialogue on all matters, asserting, in particular, that it is “all to the strategic interest of the United States of America,” if Russia can help, as it is helping, to end the war in Syria.

Kerry was scathing, when asked about “criticism” that Putin “has won in Syria” because he’s been able to get a “foothold” in the Middle East. “Frankly, I find that ridiculous,” he responded. “Russia has had a foothold there. Russia built the air defense of Syria years ago. Russia—” But they’ve gotten more of a foothold, CBS’s John Dickerson interjected. “Well, more power— have at it,” Kerry shot back. “I see no threat whatsoever to the fact that Russia has some additional foundation in a Syria, where we don’t want a base, where we are not looking for some kind of a long-term presence. If Russia can help stabilize and provide for a peace process that actually ends this war, which is putting existential —”

Interrupted again, “So they’re an ally in Syria?,” Kerry said “no,” and continued to develop his thought: “which is putting existential pressure on Europe as well as existential pressure on Jordan, on Lebanon, and creating an environment that threatens Israel—you talk about threats to Israel—that turmoil is a threat to Israel. So if Russia can help us—and it is, right now—;  Russia has helped bring about the Iran nuclear agreement. Russia helped get the chemical weapons out of Syria. Russia is now helping with the cessation of hostilities. And if Russia can help us to actually effect this political transition, that is all to the strategic interest of the United States of America.”

Dickerson pressed Kerry—in an exchange curiously not included in the official State Department transcript—on how Americans should think about Putin, in light of what he was saying. His reply was that “there are still contradictions,” citing Ukraine as a remaining major challenge. In the Moscow meetings, “we worked on Ukraine. We talked at length about how we could have the full implementation of the the Minsk process, but clearly we still have sanctions in place, because of what Russia chose to do,” he reported.

But at the same time, Russia has cooperated with the U.S. on Iran negotiations, and has continued to cooperate on other issues important to us, and has offered to be helpful with respect to Yemen, Libya, and other places, Kerry continued. We live in a world which is not black and white all the time; this is not the same world as the bipolar, East-West Cold War period, he said. We don’t have the luxury of just sitting there, just pretending we’re something ideologically pure and not deal practically with issues.

For his part, Peskov was asked by Russian channel TVC on the prospects for an improvement in U.S.-Russian relations, in an interview aired on March 26 and reported by RT Sunday. He said that the Kremlin does not have any “illusions,” but “I think it is possible to say that there have been positive advances. They lie in a mutual atmosphere, because if we compare the atmosphere with what it was a year ago, then of course there is an evident desire to communicate, and there is readiness. At least now the understanding has matured that there is no alternative to dialogue in resolving issues which cannot be delayed.”

EIR‘s Jeffrey Steinberg participated in the fourth annual Moscow Economic Forum on March 23-24 at Moscow State University. Over 1,000 people attended the two-day forum, including guests from all over Europe and China. Steinberg was the only American speaker at the two-day event.

Steinberg addressed a conference session on fiscal policy, detailing the actual collapse of the U.S. economy from the time of the end of the Bretton Woods system, the shutdown of the real economy, the rise of the too-big-to-fail banks and the Dodd-Frank bail-in policy.  During the final plenary sessions, he addressed the entire conference on the new paradigm of Eurasian development, reiterating the collapse of the trans-Atlantic system and urging the participants to focus on the One Belt, One Road program.  “The future is to be found in the Xian-to-Duisburg and related Eurasian development corridors.”