Author: Alicia

Dr. Wu Ji, director-general of the National Space Science Center in Beijing, has led the effort to get China to invest in making ground-breaking contributions to space science. As reported in a comprehensive article by Andrew Jones, in the Finland-based gbtimes Tuesday, Wu explains that in China, “in GDP we are second in the world. [but] that’s only money. So we have to make some contribution to human beings and our knowledge.” He notes that there is strong public backing for space science missions, beyond the concerns about budgets. He said, “People are eager to see some breakthroughs, to say that China has [made] a fundamental contribution to fundamental science.”

Wu, himself, Jones reports, was in Europe’s Space Technology and Research Center in 1986, when Halley’s Comet visited our night sky. “That was very, very inspiring for a young engineer,” says Wu. He and his colleagues have created the plans for China’s space science missions for the current 12th Five Year Plan, and for the next plan, from 2016-2020. The first space science mission launched under the multi-year plan was the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) in December. Three more should be launched this year, including an X-ray telescope. Eight experiments in fluid physics will also be conducted in the Tiangong-2 module, to be launched this year. Longer-term, more complex and challenging missions are also being planned, out to 2030. They encompass nearly every field of astrophysics, cosmology, and include biological science.

On the prospects for international cooperation that are being offered by China, Wu says that a selection of a new round of priority missions has taken place, one of which is a joint solar wind explorer mission with the European Space Agency. (This is a joint space science project with young scientists that China and ESA have under way, to develop a joint satellite). The next round of space science missions will be launched around 2020, Wu said.

In November, Wu told the press, at a briefing on the up-coming science missions: “China should not only follow others in space exploration; it should set some challenging goals that have never been done by others, such as sending the Chang’e-4 lunar probe to land on the far side of the Moon.” And that is precisely what China is doing. 

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716), a wild, optimistic genius, spent his life improving mankind—in economics, science, philosophy, and politics. The inventor of the calculus and a creator of physical economics, his work and life serve as a model for today, and were an inspiration to the young Lyndon LaRouche. Jason Ross presents the first in a series of discussions.

Add your thoughtful comments and questions, to be responded to in future shows.

Recommended Leibniz reading — top three are:
• Discourse on Metaphysics
• Specimen Dynamicum
• Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence

During the Question-and-Answer session at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 13, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had said, in his preceding speech at Munich, that military cooperation with Russia is what the United States wants. But, said Lavrov, he finds statements coming from Ashton Carter’s Pentagon which contradict a desire for cooperation. Lavrov cited the United States’ insistence on continuing its own military action in Syria, while demanding that Russia put its campaign on hold — even though both campaigns are targeting terrorist groups, RT reported today.

Lavrov emphasized to the Munich Security Conference Saturday, “The key instrument in settlement of both the humanitarian problem and the truce problem, is establishment of a daily, hourly cooperation and coordination between the U.S. military, leading their coalition, and the Russian Federation’s military, since we [russia] are working in Syria at the invitation from the Syrian government.” Lavrov said cooperation with the Russian Federation is important, since Moscow “has certain influence on Damascus.”

Lavrov said, “The discussion around the truce is moving sideways to stop the Russian Air Force grouping, thus arousing suspicions and giving reasons for regretful thoughts about what could be the result of all the work in Munich on [the Support Group’s Communique] adopted Feb. 12. If there are no honest daily contacts between the military — in the region, in any other convenient place, from where it is possible to see clearly what happens on the ‘ground,’ and from where it would be possible to manage what happens on the ‘ground,’ then nothing will be implemented. Contacts between the military are fixed in that declaration [the Group’s communique]. If the U.S. ‘moves backwards,’ it undertakes a colossal responsibility,” Lavrov said.

“The fact that the discourse around this ceasefire is drifting toward prioritizing the halt of the operations of the Russian Air Forces, makes me strongly suspect that our peace effort would end in a sour way. If the military are not maintaining an honest day-to-day contact nothing can be achieved,” Lavrov said. “If the Americans try to play it back now, it would be their responsibility,” he added, the RT report said.

There were indications Sunday of the strong potential for an imminent Turkish/Saudi invasion of Syria, following two days of Turkish artillery shelling positions of both the Syrian Arab Army and Kurdish militias near the Syrian city of Aleppo. Both Saudi aircraft and special forces troops have moved into southern Turkey since Feb. 12, and Turkish government figures have spoken publicly of a “major escalation” in the war in Syria — when Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Kerry have announced an attempt to stop the war with a ceasefire.

Several military commentators in the United States have described this possible, completely illegal invasion of Syria as a “race to get to Racca.” Russian-supported Syrian forces and their allies have recently moved from their advances around Aleppo, toward Racca, the “capital” of the proclaimed “caliphate” of the ISIS terrorists. The Turkish-Saudi move would be an attempt to sabotage the ceasefire, and a desperate try at defying Russian President Putin’s clearly successful strategy for bringing war to an end in Syria and Iraq.

EIR Founding Editor Lyndon LaRouche said on Sunday of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, that “if they are not insane, they will not do this. They are panic-stricken because they know they are losing power, and Putin is prepared for this.”

But in fact, on Feb. 11, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, although in Brussels for a NATO defense ministers’ meeting, held another meeting which was “the centerpiece” of his trip. Defense News called it “the first summit of its kind” with 28 other countries and 21 observer countries of the so-called U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.

Defense News’s Aaron Mehta reports blunty, “[q]uestions remain about how successful the campaign can be if Russia remains active in Syria.”

Carter and the U.S. Commander in charge of the anti-ISIS coalition’s fight, Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, presented a strategy for the rapid re-taking of Raqqa and Mosul, ISIS’ stronghold in Iraq. Carter repeatedly pushed Sunni Arab nations to get more involved. NPR quoted Carter in an interview pushing the Turks: “I think the Turks can do more to fight ISIL. They’re helping us fight ISIL by hosting our aircraft in Turkey. I’m grateful for that, but I think they can do more.” Saudi Arabia reportedly agreed to increase its airstrikes inside Syria, and consider Saudi troops on the ground, “potentially giving Barack Obama the Sunni ground force he publicly called for,” as Defense News proclaimed.

If the Turks and Saudis are now insane enough to “do more” and invade, it will be Obama, then, who sent them in to risk war, potentially world war, with Russia.

The People’s Bank of China reminded the financial world today that trans-Atlantic and Japanese banks and stock markets just had their worst week of 2016, with all Chinese markets closed and no new data about the Chinese economy available.

It is not China, but the zero- and negative-interest policies of the Western central banks and the oil price collapse, which have triggered the crisis, Xinhua quoted central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan.

The trans-Atlantic bank blowout is still only in early stages. The Feb. 14 Money Morning newsletter notes, “We Haven’t Seen the End of Bank Troubles,” with a subhead, “European ‘Gambler’ Banks Will Detonate.” “The carnage in European banks is much worse than U.S. banks,” it states, “but then again European banks have much more serious problems. They suffer from inadequate capital and enormous amounts of bad loans that could force them into insolvency without government support.” After discussing the great distress of Deutche Bank and Credit Suisse in particular, the newsletter concludes, “Europe’s banks are in big trouble and that poses a serious risk to the rest of the world, because these banks do business with every other financial institution in the world. The U.S. economy and U.S. markets cannot insulate themselves from their problems…. U.S. banks are well capitalized and should not pose a systemic risk -… unless their derivatives books blow up.”

A blizzard of financial media “commentary” over the weekend tried to argue, not so much the classic “This time is different,” but “This country [i.e., U.S. banks] is different.”

But oil and commodity debt continues to drag U.S. banks over the cliff. The Markit financial data firm has a report that 26% of all “high-yield” bonds held by U.S.-based banks are now classed as distressed debt: i.e., they have yields more than 10% higher than U.S. Treasuries. The “distressed” share was 7% a year ago. That is 26% of approximately $2 trillion, or about $500 billion in distressed debt. “Bad loans,” already non-performing, are approximately 11%, or about $225 billion.

An experienced Japanese source noted of this, that a safe regulatory standard for such a crisis, would be classifying all that “high-yield” debt as either “risk” or “high-risk” debt, requiring that banks hold loan-loss reserves of either 50% or 75% of their total high-yield debt assets.

But the major Wall Street banks each have $15-20 billion of such assets, except for Citibank, which has about $50 billion. And these banks’ loan-loss reserves against these investments are only in the hundreds of millions, between 5% and 7% of the assets, although 11% of the assets are already non-performing. The loan-loss reserves of the major Canadian banks, against oil/gas exposure, are typically only 0.5% to 1.5%. 

The trans-Atlantic financial panic which is now developing is worse than that of 2008; it puts us on the edge of the collapse of economy and civilization.

Although Wall Street is fiercely insisting that “it’s only the European banks,” this is a lie shown by their own trillion-dollar pile of bad assets, with their derivatives now beginning to blow out. We await the first major bank failure, perhaps as early as this month, or this week. But the real panic is what will then follow. A quadrillion-dollar mass of derivatives connect all these megabanks together since Glass-Steagall was done away with. They have already reduced the trans-Atlantic and Japanese economies below zero growth; their collapse will destroy those economies.

We can save the United States from bankruptcy and collapse. Congress can take emergency actions. With a Glass-Steagall reform, Congress can shut Wall Street down, and then start creating national credit for investments in real productivity in the American economy—for the first time in half a century. It requires the science driver “mission” of a fully revived U.S. NASA program, in collaboration especially with China’s, India’s, and Russia’s space programs.

Saving the United States from bankruptcy requires more than unconditional surrender by Wall Street; it also requires Congress to remove Barack Obama from authority, or Wall Street’s panic can end in Obama’s world war.

We are at the brink of Turkish-Saudi invasion of Syria, acting on plans made with Obama’s Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and directly risking war with Russia.
The move, which could be upon us now, makes no sense. It is insane for an increasingly bankrupt and discredited Saudi Arabia, and an already destabilized Turkey, to stage an illegal invasion and put the planet on the verge of world war. Russian President Putin’s intervention since Sept. 30, 2015 had not only created the alternative to an ISIS/al-Qaeda takeover of all of Syria; that alternative also has been successful in moving the war close to ceasefire.

These threatening invaders are irrelevant. The war factor is Obama, and the British bankers and royals who guide and control him. If Obama is openly pushing Turkish and Saudi pawns, to threaten a war which can destroy civilization, the backlash to that action may cause his removal from the office of President by use of the 25th Amendment.

The greater war factor is the now-rapid collapse of the banking systems and the economies of Europe and the United States. Wall Street’s panic is the reality. Stick to the job of shutting it down immediately. If we do so, we have the means—with Russia and its ally China—of avoiding Obama’s world war.

Sign me up, I need to know more.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen replied to Sen. Bob Corker in testimony Feb. 11 that the Federal Reserve was again studying the possibility of adopting a negative Fed Funds rate, as the central banks of Japan, Europe, and several individual European countries already have in this crisis. Yellen said the Fed had studied and rejected the idea in 2011-12. But unaccountably, she said that Japan and Europe have had “no problems” with negative rates.

The opposite is the case, and the problems are becoming severe, threatening, paradoxically, a deflationary economic collapse. Since the European Central Bank (in December) and the Bank of Japan (in January) adopted negative rates, they have seen results exactly opposed to what they expected and intended. Their currencies have gone up sharply, and their stock markets have plunged. Price deflation has immediately reappeared in Japan, and the very small price inflation which had been “accomplished” by ECB head Mario Draghi by last Fall, has largely disappeared.

Negative interest rates “paid” (i.e., actually fees charged) on the large excess reserves which big banks have been holding at their central banks, are intended to drive those reserves out of the central banks and into lending in the economy. The opposite has occurred. As zero interest becomes negative interest — in a credit crisis — banks and other financial firms are buying and holding their own currency, government bonds and precious metals for “safe haven” speculations. In addition, they have begun to charge negative interest to their depositors in the form of fees, and tighten their lending criteria, as Handelsblatt reported Feb. 12. Bank lending in Europe is again declining overall.

The effect is to lead toward a deflationary collapse.

The effect is worse for Japan, because so much of its wealth is usually invested outside the country. Europe’s negative rates, stock collapse, and bail-in policy, as well as the plunge in rates on U.S. Treasury securities, are driving Japanese capital and savings back into Japan while BoJ policy is giving it nothing to invest in.

In the Telegraph Friday morning, financial columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in “Bank of Japan loses control as QE hits limits,” writes, “The drastic developments have been nothing less than a disaster for Governor Haruhiko Kuroda who pushed through negative rates. This could be the death of Abenomics. Events are going horribly wrong…” Pritchard notes that the yen has appreciated by 9% against the dollar in less than one month under negative rates (the euro, which he does not discuss, has gone up by about 6% against the dollar since Jan. 1). Producer price deflation in Japan is suddenly -3.1% at an annual rate.

Evans-Pritchard quotes one bank analyst: “This is a reverse policy shock. We are reaching the limits of quantitative easing as we know it.” 

This page will be live at 8 pm EST.

This Friday’s LaRouchePAC webcast will focus on LaRouche’s emergency mobilization to restore the American space program and make its destruction by Barack Obama the most prominent feature of his necessary impeachment as President of the United States.

The great strategists, like the William Shakespeare about whom Lyndon LaRouche did seminal studies in January 2014, understood that the new breakthrough required for human survival required striking out on pathways where no man had ever gone before; indeed, pathways whose very existence had never been suspected before.  This was what Douglas MacArthur did in the Pacific in World War II: he conceived a totally new dimension of action, never before imagined, never before possible, which allowed his inferior forces to continually defeat superior forces.

This changed history for all time, but it was only one of several such breakthroughs made by MacArthur.  The same is true of Lyndon LaRouche.

In every case, the decisions they made were not just for a day or a year, but for all future time.  In this respect, all of them echoed Prometheus’ fateful decision, taken once and for all long before our recorded history, that he would shield mankind from the fate of extermination which Zeus had decreed for our species.  Like President John F. Kennedy’s decision announced to Congress on May 25, 1961, that

We must take another such decision today; this is the fight which LaRouchePAC leader Kesha Rogers of Houston, Texas, is leading.

Tune in Friday at 8 pm EST for a special Webcast featuring Kesha Rogers.

In his webcast of Monday, Feb. 8, with the LaRouchePAC Policy Committee, LaRouche compared the mental outlook of the United States today, with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, citing the intrusion of the British Empire from the very inception of the US: “It happened immediately with the beginning of the United States as a nation.  The destruction was massive: most of the Presidents of the United States were actually enemies of the United States; most of them were! And that’s why the problem keeps coming back.  And still does: This is the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire model.

“And what you’ve got, you’ve got the Eurasian model now, the resuscitation of China; what Putin has done on his part.  He was inspired on this thing.  Remember, as I’ve mentioned a number of times, his family, Putin’s family came from an area which was a concentration of death, because of the location of the battles there.  And Putin has managed to be a factor in bringing about a strengthening, of both China and Russia, to save Russia.  And what the implications are; and what I’ve seen from the areas I used to poke around in, you know, in India and so forth, areas which I was working in.

“And what we’re seeing is that this area, this Eurasian area contains within it, elements which are the basis of creating or recreating a new system for mankind.  And what the result will be, the characteristic built into this thing,  the characteristic is, the space program.

“What do we mean by the space program?  Well,  not the space program the way the idiot thinks about the space program, but the space program is a reflection that mankind is getting wise, with the new Moon operation, mankind is getting wise to the reality that mankind on Earth is not the power that rules Earth; but rather, there is a force beyond that, which controls the achievement of space, and what that means is that mankind is a creature, that lives in space.  And it’s in that area, that domain, and the activities and development in that domain, which is the future for mankind.

“The important thing here is, you have to just take a little, short trip and think about it.  What does this mean?  And the Moon thing, right now, the new Moon project, this is probably the key, to bringing this idea not only into what’s happening in China right now, but for the entire human species.  But we’re going for a change in the species characteristics, from what had been traditional and what is going to emerge, now, from the new change.

“And so therefore, the idea, if you want to do something good, look at that.  Don’t ask what somebody says, ‘well, I think that that is this; I think that that is that…’  That’s no good! The problem is that mankind has been a failure, but why has mankind been a failure?  Not because of mankind’s inherent nature.  But because of his corruption.”

In other discussions over recent days, LaRouche has pointed back to his controversial 2014 Shakespeare studies referenced above, making the point, among other points, that the almost-universally held conception of human history is a fraud. That history is actually composed by the sorts of bold, unprecedented discoveries we were discussing above.  These discoveries comprise the nature of man.  Look at the brilliant and radical invention of physical space-time in an arc from Kepler, to Leibniz, through Gauss, and then Planck and Einstein.

LaRouche’s Feb. 8 webcast contained several different, convergent trains of thought along these lines of urgent action. This was the conclusion of one of them:

“So the question of creativity means that the whole system, of the Solar System and beyond, is essentially dominated by these events, the same events which are the events which are characterized by the system, as a whole.  It’s there!  The question is, what do you want to do?  You want to create people who are creative.  You want to be able to create babies, which are themselves creative in an in original way.  And you see that: Einstein was, for example, a good example of this thing.  If you take what we know of his history, that human creativity is a unique matter, it is what really should dominate and control the history of mankind.”

Lawyers representing the families of U.S. citizens tortured and murdered by the Mexican drug cartels, yesterday filed a dynamite federal civil suit against HSBC bank in the U.S. District Court in Brownsville, Texas. The suit charges that HSBC’s “material support” to the cartels through the laundering of their proceeds, makes it liable under the Anti-Terrorist Act for those tortures and murders.

The case is a de facto indictment of Obama and his Department of Justice, which knowingly refused to prosecute HSBC—the modern form of the British Hong Shang Bank Corporation founded to run the opium trade against India and China two centuries ago—and thereby are complicit with the cartels.

The suit filed, demands a jury trial, where evidence can be brought before the public. It argues:

“This is an action brought by American victims of horrific acts of international terrorism committed by some of the most powerful and ruthless of Mexico’s drug cartels… For the decade leading up the attacks at issue, and with full knowledge of the drug cartels’ terroristic activities the HSBC Defendants … knowingly provided continuous and systematic material support to the cartels and their acts of terrorism by laundering billions of dollars for them… Over the course of the 21st century, the Mexican drug cartels…have risen as the greatest single threat to Mexican national security and one of the greatest threats to the United States… The ability to conceal the source of their illicit proceeds and gain access to the international financial system is vital to the existence of the drug cartels and their ability to execute widespread acts of terrorism. Money laundering is the lifeblood of the Mexican drug cartels.”

The suit cites evidence revealed in the devastating report produced by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 2012, which documented HSBC’s money laundering for drug cartels and terrorists around the globe. The Obama administration refused to take action, instead negotiating a “Deferred Prosecution Agreement” (DPA) with HSBC in 2012, under which HSBC paid a small fine and promised to “be good” for five years, and the Feds would monitor it to verify.

The Monitor report produced last year under the terms of that DFA, some 1,000 pages long, found that HSBC has continued violating U.S. money-laundering statutes right and left. This past January, in response to a suit brought by a Philadelphia mortgage holder whom HSBC had robbed in its usual way, U.S. Federal Court Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn, NY, ruled that the monitor report should be partially released to the public.

HSBC and Obama’s Justice Department have appealed the ruling, on the grounds that confidentiality is key for such deferred prosecution agreements.

Hubert Dean Moore, Jr., the mortgage holder fighting for the report’s release, told the New York Post, as published in yesterday’s edition, that the Department of Justice is “siding with a criminal organization under wraps, under seal, under the veil of secrecy…. Who benefits from this DPA? The people don’t benefit. It’s the bank and the DOJ.”

The centerpiece of Barack Obama’s program to shut down coal plants across the United States in the fraudulent name of “reducing carbon emissions”, was halted by the U.S. Supreme Court Feb. 10, with its 5-4 ruling granting a stay on implementation of Obama’s “Clean Power Plan” until the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rules on whether the plan is legal or not. That won’t be soon; oral arguments on the lawsuit filed by 27 states and industry opponents contesting its legality, begin on June 2, 2016, and a decision could come months afterwards.

“U.S Supreme Court Torpedoes Paris COP21 Accord,” green genocide supporters screamed. Unable to get legislation passed with sufficient “climate change” restrictions to shut down U.S. industry as demanded by the British Royal Family, Obama walked into the December COP21 climate change-conference in Paris bragging that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations his Clean Power plan imposed on the U.S. coal industry would do the trick. The New York Times warned today that the global warming accord reached in Paris “had as a cornerstone Mr. Obama’s assurance that the United States would carry out strong, legally sound policies to significantly cut carbon emissions,” and that is now in peril. A Chinese government thinktanker told the Times that if “low carbon development” is overturned in the U.S., opponents in China of these policies will use that to overturn such policies in China, too. An Indian “climate diplomat” similarly told the Times that the decision “could be the proverbial string which causes Paris to unravel.”

The Supreme Court stay is not the final word, but it was considered “stunning” and “extraordinary,” because the court so rarely intervenes in this way while a matter is still before a lower court. Furthermore, given the conditions cited in the Supreme Court’s own “Reporter’s Guide to Applications Pending Before the Supreme Court of the United States,” the granting of the stay gives grounds to believe that, should the DC court rule Obama’s plan legal, the Supreme Court could overturn that decision. The Reporter’s Guide cites “general criteria that the applicant normally must satisfy in order for the Court to grant a stay,” including that there is a reasonable probability that four Justices would agree to hear such an appeal, and that “there is a fair prospect that a majority of the Court” would overturn the lower court decision upon review.

White House Press Spokesman Josh Earnest blustered that the administration “will continue to take aggressive steps to make forward progress to reduce carbon emissions,” but representatives from the 27 states who joined the suit are celebrating. West Virginia’s Democratic Senator Joe Manchin warned the EPA it must stop its “reckless actions… immediately,” and applauded the Supreme Court “for recognizing that these regulations are simply unlawful.”