Author: Alicia

With the Obama Administration’s Solicitor General defending legalized marijuana in an Amicus Curiae (friend of the court) brief, the Supreme Court today dismissed a lawsuit by Nebraska and Oklahoma against neighbor Colorado’s law that legalized marijuana. Nebraska and Oklahoma made a strong case that a flood of marijuana grown and/or sold in Colorado was overwhelming law enforcement in their states, creating a danger to the public, especially to young drug users.

The Obama Admnistration’s amicus brief says that Nebraska and Oklahoma have not “sufficiently alleged that Colorado has inflicted the sort of direct injury to their sovereign interests” that warrants a direct case before the Supreme Court (a seldom used measure that allows a state to bring a suit against another state directly to the Supreme Court), because they have only “alleged that third-party lawbreakers” are responsible for the drug trafficking.

However, Nebraska and Oklahoma included allegations that the law enforcement and political authorities of Colorado have been grossly lax in trying to stop the flow of drugs over its state borders into the other states.

The Drug Policy Alliance, a George Soros-funded operation, was gleeful over the Supreme Court decision, stating, “The refusal to hear this case is a big win for our movement, and another step towards ending the prohibition of marijuana for good.” The dopers also ask for for a “generous tax-deductible contribution” to help legalize marijuana throughout the U.S.A.

EIR‘s Southwest Asia specialist and Arabic editor, Hussein Askary, has concluded a very successful one-week trip to Egypt to launch and promote the Arabic translation of EIR‘s Special Report The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge, and the ideas within the report. The report and the presentations made by Askary were enthusiastically welcomed by top government officials, economists, and media.

Egyptian Ministry of Transport meeting announcing EIR’s Arabic-language World Landbridge report.

The highpoint of this intervention was the very high-level and well-attended launching of the Report under the auspices of the Egyptian Ministry of Transport in a seminar on March 17 at the headquarters of the Ministry, presided and introduced by Minister Saad El Geyoushi personally.

The other highpoint was the reception awarded Askary on March 20 by the Chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, Admiral Mohab Mamish, the man who oversaw the breathtaking building of the New Suez Canal. Mamish received Askary at his office in Ismailia right on the Suez Canal, and attentively listened to a detailed briefing on the importance of this achievement not only for Egypt’s economy, but also for the region and the global economy, too, if it is utilized as a development zone and hub for the development corridors stretching from China through Southwest Asia to Africa, and also as part of the Maritime Silk Road.

Hussein Askary with Admiral Mohab Mamish, Chairman of the Suez Canal Authority.

Askary’s meeting with Mamish, in which the latter received a gift copy of the report, was preceded by a presentation to the team working under Eng. Nagy Ahmed Amin, Director of Planning, and Research Studies Department at the Suez Canal Authority. Askary was later offered a private guided boat tour of the New Suez Canal.

At the launching seminar at the Transportation Ministry, Dr. Saad El Geyoushi personally presented Askary, as the Southwest Asia specialist of EIR and representative of the Schiller Institute, and in both his introductory remarks and commentary on Askary’s presentation, Dr. El Geyoushi expressed total concordance with the idea of the New Silk Road, and his government’s plans to integrate Egypt’s transportation networks into the New Silk Road dynamic. He also took the opportunity to announce that the Egyptian government intends to invest one trillion Egyptian Pounds (100 billion US$) in roads and railways, not only to develop Egypt’s transportation network, but also to connect Egypt to Asia, and, most importantly, to Africa to the south, in a 50,000 km network.

The packed hall at the Ministry hosted top experts and advisors of the Ministry and other institutions, and several Egytian TV networks and newspapers. Interestingly, the Chinese Arabic TV channel CCTV-Arabic, was present, and recorded an interview with Askary. Two other TV channels also interviewed Askary.

Hussein Askary At Cairo Great Library.

Two other seminars were organized: one by the Egyptian Society of Engineers (founded in 1920), which was held at the Cairo Great Library, and attended by former Egyptian Prime Minister Dr. Esam Sharaf (also a former Minister of Transport in several Egyptian governments), who was the main commentator on Askary’s presentation of the New Silk Road concept. Sharaf expressed his agreement with not only the economic and scientific aspects of the presentation and the report, of which he received a copy, but also with the political, strategic and cultural aspects, too.

Hussein Askary With Egypt’s former Prime Minister Esam Sharaf at the Cairo Great Library.

He stated that he had just returned from a long visit to China, and that he deeply believed that the New Silk Road is the foundation of a new and more humane World Order, unlike the current order which has degraded human existence and dignity. He also emphasized the point raised in the report, that the New Silk Road and any other such projects are not mere trade routes, but development corridors that can transform all societies where they reach, along with the nations that decide to participate in them. He highly recommended that the current Egyptian government take this project seriously, and integrate it in its developmental plans and visions. Sharaf expressed his gratitude to EIR and the LaRouches personally, whom, he said he has taken note of, with their ideas and activities for a long time.

In addition to these events, Askary was invited to three TV shows (CBC Extra, Nile Cultural TV, and Nahdha TV) to present the report and the New World Order it represents.

The events taking place this week and all the discussions and debates that followed, clearly indicate that the idea of the New Silk Road and World Land-Bridge, and the utilization of these ideas for the development of Egypt, the Arab World, and Africa, is regarded as a way to save the Egyptian economy, which has been suffering the terrible consequences of submitting to the Transatlantic system and its institutions, such as the World Bank and IMF. Egypt is still suffering economically and socially, in addition to the security aspect that has been worsened by NATO’s unleashing of the Jihadist terrorist hordes in the region. The urgent demands of the people for reform and betterment of the living conditions are pushing the President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and his Prime Minister to resort at times to crisis-management policies. At the moment this report is written, the Egyptian government is facing a new reshuffling, with eight ministers reportedly being replaced. But the clarity of vision regarding the solutions to this crisis, and the resilience and determination shown by the Egyptian people and their leadership, represent a great hope for this nation and the region.

Be informed, get your copy of the World Land-Bridge report.

Turkey and Britain have increased their military alliances with Ukraine, as part of a continuing targeting of Russia.

Following a two day visit to Ankara by Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko March 9-10, the two countries announced closer military and economic ties.  A meeting of the Ukraine-Turkey high-level strategic council, co-chaired by Poroshenko and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, produced a document denouncing and rejecting the Russian annexation of Crimea, promising unspecified joint steps to de-occupy Crimea.  Some Western media have touted the new Kiev-Ankara defense alliance as a threat to Russia’s ability to navigate through the Black Sea.  But in reality, Ukraine and Turkey have been longstanding competitors for transit contracts for Russian gas from Gazprom.

Poroshenko brought along his Chief of General Staff Gen. Viktor Muzhenko and two leaders of the Crimean Tatars minority, now living in Ukraine.

Friday, British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon announced the Britain had signed a 15-year defense pact with Ukraine, under which Britain will provide training and intelligence, and will engage in more frequent joint maneuvers.  The agreement revives a previous joint military program that was terminated in 2006.

The war over which system — the BRICS or the corpse of Trans-Atlantic finance — will hold power in Brazil, has escalated into hourly hand-to-hand combat. President Dilma Rousseff swore former President Lula da Silva in as chief of staff of the cabinet this morning (along with several other cabinet shifts), only to have a federal judge who has repeatedly called for Rousseff to resign, and has personally participated in numerous opposition demonstrations, issue an injunction, an hour later, forbidding Lula from serving in the cabinet.

“Coups begin this way,” President Dilma Rousseff stated in her speech at the swearing-in ceremony, emphasizing the flagrant violation of constitutional principles being carried out in the name of “uprooting corruption,” most especially the utter disregard for the principles of the presumption of innocence and a citizen’s right to defense.

“Brazil cannot become submissive to a conspiracy which violates the Constitutional prerogatives of the President of the Republic,” she said. “Not because the President of the Republic is different from other citizens, but because if they can harm the prerogatives of the President of the Republic, what will they do to the prerogatives of the citizens?”

Less than an hour later, Federal Judge Preta Neto did exactly what Rousseff had identified as steps towards a coup. He issued a restraining order against Lula’s appointment, on the basis of a filing by three opposition parties in 27 different federal courts yesterday, which argued that Lula’s appointment be blocked, and the President herself charged with “the crime of disobedience and obstruction of justice” for daring to name him.

The Attorney General filed this afternoon to overturn Preta Neto’s ruling. Tomorrow, national demonstrations in support of the government and democratic governance have been called by a coalition led by the Workers Party, of some 50 trade union federations, social movements, and parties which support the government

You who believe it all comes down to numbers.  You who believe it all comes down to money (and sex).  In one sense, you’ve finally won it all, especially after almost four terms of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.  Now there’s probably no school in the country that teaches actual science,— only empty mathematics, the fetishism of numbers,— which is the same old babble of the ancient Babylonian priesthood.  And as LaRouchePAC leader Kesha Rogers of Texas has pointed out, when Obama shut down our space program, he shut down the last vestige of the optimistic, capable America of Jack Kennedy which the world rightly looked up to.

You’ve won,— but you’ve won what?  The United States and the whole trans-Atlantic region is nothing but a corpse now. Unlike the United States of Franklin Roosevelt or Jack Kennedy, the United States of Barack Obama is hated throughout the world as the mass murderer he is, and it is.  All we represent now is Obama’s threat of death from the skies to the murder-victims he selects in the White House every Tuesday, in special meetings called “Terror Tuesdays.”  And beyond that, Obama’s imminent intention of a species-extinguishing thermonuclear attack, especially, right now, against China.

Our economy is gone under Obama, hope is gone, and the strata of our most-productive skilled workers are instead committing suicide in unheard-of numbers.  Yes, indeed, you’ve won.  But won what?

This the long-delayed payoff for allowing Franklin Roosevelt’s policies to be reversed by the FBI in 1944, while that President was still alive, although exhausted, and still in the White House.  This is the payoff for allowing Jack Kennedy to be assassinated, and the thrust of his policies with him.  For allowing his younger brother to be assassinated within reach of the White House, without the needed fight to continue their legacy.  Then, when Ronald Reagan was severely wounded in an assassination-attempt at the very beginning of his term, the Bush family used the period of Reagan’s long convalescence to substantially take over his Presidency, and railroad Lyndon LaRouche to prison, to bury the revolutionary “SDI” policies LaRouche had authored for Reagan, which would have saved this nation by pivoting into a new Renaissance for mankind.

Where were you then?  Where are you now?

Now that you have rejected all these attempts to save you, only a much harsher treatment is still available to you.  Finally reject once and for all, every idea that it all comes down to numbers (or sex), and from there, finally grasp Lyndon LaRouche’s discovery dating back to the 1950s, which revolutionized the science of economy, analogously to Bernhard Riemann’s great scientific discovery displayed in his Habilitation Dissertation.

Now this discovery is being reflected back into the dying trans-Atlantic system from a successful Eurasia, especially from Russia, China and the BRICS nations.  Lyndon LaRouche was integrally involved in the fashioning of the unprecedented Russia-China alliance which was at the heart of the RIC which became the BRICS, but that is a longer story for another time. After developing the SDI policy for Reagan, Lyndon LaRouche worked with his wife Helga to develop what became known as the “Eurasian Landbridge,” which is today called the Silk Road, or China’s “One Belt, One Road” policy, which is at the heart of the Renaissance of Eurasia.

If America is to survive, it must join with China and Russia now.  Obviously, national identities and senses of national identity will change.  Those who have joined the numbers game must recognize their failure and step down. The rest of us must rise to the level which Lyndon LaRouche has so long represented.

I’m interested, tell me more

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement, Monday, of the partial Russian military withdrawal from Syria, indicates that Russia has now shifted, fully, into supporting the peace process that the military intervention, along with determined diplomacy, helped to bring about. The Kremlin transcript of the meeting between Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demonstrates as much.

Shoigu reported that during the campaign, the Russian air contingent had flown over 9,000 missions and that the military had demonstrated, for the first time, the capability of carrying out “massive strikes with dispersed weaponry at a distance of over 1,500 kilometers using both air- and sea-based missiles.” More important was the effect: terrorist operations in Syria were significantly hindered by the cutting of their oil smuggling to, and supply lines from, Turkey; government control was re-established over large areas of Syria; and, Shoigu said, more than 2,000 “criminals” from Russia were eliminated on Syrian territory. “In total, with support from our air force, the Syrian troops liberated 400 towns and over 10,000 square kilometers of territory,” Shoigu said. “We have had a significant turning point in the fight against terrorism.”

“[o]ur Aerospace Forces operation helped create conditions for the political process,” Lavrov said. “We have consistently advocated establishing an intra-Syrian dialogue in accordance with the decisions made in 2012. Our suggestions were met with a lack of will on the part of all our partners working on this process. But since the start of the operations by our Aerospace Forces, the situation began to change.”

Putin fully agreed. “The truly effective work by our troops has created conditions to start the peace process,” he said. “I feel that the objectives set before the Defense Ministry and the Russian Armed Forces in the Syrian Arab Republic have generally been fulfilled.” Then came the part that no one in the West apparently expected. “I feel that the objective set before the Defense Ministry and the Armed Forces is generally fulfilled, so I order the Defence Ministry to begin withdrawing the main part of our military group from the Syrian Arab Republic, beginning tomorrow,” he said. “I ask the Foreign Ministry to intensify the Russian Federation’s participation in organizing the peace process to resolve Syria’s problems. At the same time, our base points — our maritime base in Tartus and our aviation base at the Hmeymim airbase — will function as before. They must be protected securely from land, sea and air.”

In other words, Putin has ordered a reconfiguration of the Russian military presence in Syria to support what is now a peace effort, in which Russia will remain fully engaged, and a continuing war on ISIS and al Nusra.

On his first foreign visit after being named president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Jin Liqun came to Denmark and Finland, and spoke at a public event organized by Copenhagen University and the Copenhagen Business School. Members of the Schiller Institute attended, asking one of the two questions at the event.

Here are the most important points in Jin Liqun’s speech.

The purpose of the AIIB is to promote win-win economic and social development through infrastructure investment. Jin said that he does not believe in poverty reduction in and of itself. In 1980, when mainland China replaced Taiwan in the Bretton Woods institutions, China had nothing but human population. Then, they started to borrow to build infrastructure, and some were worried about debt creation. (It was the time when Mexico had a big debt crisis.) But the benefits of infrastructure investment appeared 25 years later, when the economy started to take off. At the same time, other countries were borrowing to sustain consumption. This policy enabled China to lift 600 million people out of poverty.

In answer to his own question about whether the AIIB’s purpose is to finance the One Belt, One Road projects, he said that the bank is owned by the 57 member nations, and 50 others want to join, 30 of which have made the decision to join. This is not China’s bank, he said; OBOR will only be a part of the bank’s engagements, and there has to be a balance between financing projects across the regions.

The purpose is to finance sustainable economic development, wealth creation, and infrastructure in Asia which contributes to connectivity in the vast Eurasian land mass, not just Asia proper, with, for example, rapid rail to cut the cost of transportation between Europe and Asia. Now, it is easier to travel from Beijing to Europe, than between Asian nations. Policies also have to be harmonized, for example, to ease border crossing.

The AIIB will do things that have not been done before by the Bretton Woods financial institutions, including the World Bank, because it will learn from their pluses and minuses. Asia is awash with liquidity, but now that money has to go to Europe and the U.S. before it is recycled back to Asia.

Infrastructure investment can be wasteful if there are not good, thought-out projects — like a power plant, without a modern transmission system. The AIIB will help to design coordinated projects.

Yes, there are disputes in the South China Sea, but the joint infrastructure projects between China and the ASEAN nations have built mutual confidence, and win-win cooperation. Look at Syria, we don’t want to see that happen elsewhere, but we must learn to lessen the chaos, and work out differences.

Development also helps environmental protection. You are not worried about the environment, if you are worried about how you are going to get breakfast the next day.

In response to a question from Tom Gillesberg, chairman of the Schiller Institute in Denmark, about how the AIIB will be different from the World Bank, which refused to finance infrastructure projects if, for example, a frog species would be endangered, Jin said that, you sometimes have to sacrifice a little on the environmental impact in order to get development, and the net effect will be positive. Development is the solution.

“We still cannot be weaned from fossil fuels…. But because of development, we humans can come up with a technology, achieve breakthroughs in technology. Eventually, we can tap solar energy directly, but you cannot leapfrog this stage…. People are afraid of nuclear power, but if we could have a breakthrough in nuclear fusion, we may solve the problem once and for all. How can we achieve this? Development! Let’s work together” to achieve breakthroughs.