Author: Alicia

Barack Obama’s budget request for NASA in Fiscal Year 2017 marks the first time that NASA has ever been cut to below 0.5% of the Federal budget — its share was near 5% during the years of JFK’s Apollo Program.

In requesting $19 billion for NASA, Obama cut the Congressional authorization for the space agency by $300 million. But he called for much deeper cuts in “deep space” and “planetary” exploration, the area of NASA’s work in which national missions for the future could emerge, were Obama removed. These cuts, combined, were in the range of $1 billion, according to a review in USA Today.

In 2006 NASA, despite years of declining resources in real terms, still was making plans for a Moon base, with a future of scientific observation of the universe and preparations to exploit the Moon, including as a potential forward base for travel to Mars. In some versions of NASA’s planning, the base was to be on the Moon’s far side.

Obama scrapped that in 2009-10 by killing the Constellation Program, thus making the Moon inaccessible for the indefinite future, and formally renouncing it as a goal.

Now China and Russia are the nations planning for robotic and human landings on the Moon — perhaps in collaboration — led by China’s just-announced intention to start a base on the far side of the Moon by 2018-20.

Obama, when killing Constellation, claimed the United States could, at some future time, go straight to Mars with a new Space Launch System and “Orion” program. Now, in the FY2017 budget, he is killing them, in effect; he would have done so already if Congress hadn’t insisted on investing about $10 billion in SLS/Orion since FY2011.

For SLS, for example, Congressional funding in FY2016 was about $2 billion; Obama calls for $1.3 billion in FY2017.

What Obama wants to increase, in NASA’s budget, is “Earth sciences” — climate change detection, in his diseased green mind, in the service of driving human science and technology back to the past. As EIR Founding Editor Lyndon LaRouche described it, “By cancelling the space program, you [obama] actually turn back history.”

House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) immediately denounced Obama’s budget in a statement to Ars Technica, as an “imbalanced proposal [that] continues to tie our astronauts feet to the ground and makes a Mars mission all but impossible.”

But the real fight will come, not from austerity-addled Republicans, but from activists with leaders like Texas LaRouche Democrat Kesha Rogers, who won two Congressional primary contests with the plan: “Save NASA; Impeach Obama.”

Watch Kesha on this week’s New Paradigm Show

Of all the crimes of President Barack Obama, from bailing out a bankrupt Wall Street to conducting permanent warfare, driving the world towards World War III, the most vile crime of all was the destruction of the once vibrant US space program. The space program, especially since the presidency of John Kennedy, was not only the science driver for the economy of the entire world, but also the vision for mankind as a whole, which provoked true creativity in every child, and placed men and women’s minds in the future, where creativity lies. The destruction of the space program not only stopped human progress, it drove mankind backwards. It turned back history.
 
The call to restore the space program, and future, to humanity will be featured on the LaRouchePAC Feb. 12 Friday Webcast. Lyndon LaRouche spoke of it today, as the action required for the “rebirth of the mind of mankind.” On the Feb. 10, LPAC TV New Paradigm science program, a special guest will be Kesha Rogers, leading the drive for the space program. With this perspective, she attended today’s NASA “open house” at the Johnson Space Flight Center in Texas.
 
One necessity to clear the way, is to face the fact that Wall Street is bankrupt. End the bail-outs, bail-ins, crimes, fraud and murder.
 
Look at the saga of Deutsche Bank—the biggest derivatives holder in the world. On Monday, its stock fell over 10 percent from the previous Friday, for a fall of over 40 percent this year so far. Amidst Monday’s plunge, the bank issued a statement of reassurance that it has the means to meet its coming obligations. Then Tuesday, its stock fell more. Deutsche Bank Co-CEO John Cryan then issued a statement, that the bank is “rock solid.” Next, none other than German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, in Paris for a finance ministers confab, told the media that, he has no worries over Deutsche Bank.
 
In fact, the travails of Deutsche Bank, and the increasing financial chaos, show that the system itself is dead, and at the putrefaction stage.
 
In U.S. Congress, the means exist, in the form of the bills to reinstate Glass Steagall, to start cleaning up the mess and make way for sound economic activity to power the future, but action is stalled. Ironically, there are even “reality exhibits” scheduled on Capitol Hill this week: several Senators are holding a screening of the movie, “The Big Short”—on the criminality of Wall Street, on Feb. 10; and on Feb. 11, a briefing will be given in the Senate on the fact that U.S. farm income is down 50 percent. Will those who have eyes, see?
 
If we are willing to face reality, Lyndon LaRouche stressed today,

 
The “reality imperative” also urgently applies to seeing and acting against the immediate threat of nuclear war. Right now, NATO defense ministers are gathering in Brussels, on the track of pushing for more confrontation with Russia, threatening all out thermonuclear Armageddon. The British/White House geopolitical drive is in full force.
 
In Russia, at dawn on Feb. 8, a surprise exercise of military forces was announced in the Southern Military District, which extends into the Black and Caspian Seas. Involving also command and control elements of the Central Military District, the sweeping activation has mobility tests spanning 3,000 kilometers, by rail, naval and air transport. The snap mobilization involves 8,500 troops, 900 pieces of military hardware, 50 warships and up to 200 aircraft.

Kesha Rogers will be the special guest on our weekly New Paradigm Show. Tune in live at 5 pm EST and ask a question!

In their Feb. 7 “Wall Street on Parade” column, Pam and Ross Martens argue that losses suffered last week by four Wall Street banks in intraday trading—Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley—is intimately related to the shift in the U.S. economy that occurred beginning in the late 1970s, from productive economic activity to financial speculation. Noteworthy, they point out, is the fact that these same banks, which were bailed out during the 2008 crash,  have been spending billions buying back their own stock.

That same buyback strategy has also been taking place in publicly traded companies in the S&P 500 Index, to the tune of $2.7 trillion over the past six years. Some of the buybacks, the Martens say, simply offset insider selling or stock awards to executives; nothing goes to growing or innovating the company.

The Martens quote from one William Lazonick who, in the September 2014 Harvard Business Review attacked the buyback policy, arguing that the money should have been put into job creation and innovation in the U.S. economy. Instead it was used to buy back shares “for what is effectively stock-price manipulation.” The U.S. has shifted, he says, from a “value creation to a value extraction” model.

From the end of World War II to the late 1970s, the U.S. practiced a “retain and reinvest” approach, in which earnings were reinvested in increasing a company’s capabilities and those of its employees, providing workers with higher incomes and job security. In the late 1970s, Lazonick explains, the “downsize and distribute” regime took hold, focused on reducing costs, and distributing freed-up cash “to financial interests, particularly shareholders,” leading to employment instability and income inequality.

On Monday, the Martens point out, bank shares’ value has shrunk enormously, but executives have walked away with multimillion-dollar payouts from selling stock. Note the case of Citigroup’s Robert Rubin, a former Treasury Secretary who sat on Citigroup’s Board “after helping push through the repeal of Glass-Steagall.” That repeal, Martens says, allowed Citigroup to become a “Frankenbank, and require the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history.” 

Gen. Barry McCaffrey (ret.), who headed the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in the cabinet of President Bill Clinton, said on Feb. 3 that he was very concerned about the agreement that Barack Obama has personally orchestrated with Colombia’s FARC drug cartel, in collaboration with Colombian President and British asset, Juan Manuel Santos.

As reported by PRNewswire, McCaffrey pointed out that the 15th anniversary celebration Feb. 4 at the White House of “Plan Colombia,” demonstrated its success. Plan Colombia was the program that McCaffrey personally formulated, and on which he coordinated closely with Colombian military and civilian leaders to wipe out the FARC narcoterrorists and restore stability to that country. “Cooperation with the government of Colombia led to massive cocaine transit reduction to the U.S., reduced crime, and improved Colombian stability,” McCaffrey underscored.

But, as for the pending agreement with the FARC, tentatively scheduled to be signed in March, General McCaffrey said he fears it would allow the FARC “to maintain or increase cocaine and heroin production, ease transit restrictions and enforcement, keep enormous profits for the FARC, worsen the heroin crisis in our country, threaten the security of Colombia and increase U.S. drug abuse.” Note that most of the heroin entering the U.S. today comes from either Mexico or Colombia—not from Afghanistan.

McCaffrey’s fears are justified. British tool Obama, whose drug-legalization policies have been instrumental in destroying the population—especially youth—of the United States, has personally overseen negotiations with the FARC. He sent his special envoy, former State Department official and now private equity executive Bernard Aronson, to participate in negotiations with the FARC leaders in Havana. According to the New York Times Feb. 5, Aronson was crucial in moving negotiations forward when “they appeared in danger of stalling.”

Who is Aronson? Former Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs under George H.W. Bush, he was involved in the 1989 invasion of Panama, and was a strong supporter of the drug-trafficking Contras in Nicaragua, whom he called “freedom fighters” against Soviet expansion.

The FARC has committed unspeakable atrocities in Colombia. So what? In discussing his involvement in the Havana peace talks, Aronson told the New York Times his strategy was to “simply treat the FARC negotiators with respect, cracking the stereotype of the arrogant imperialist.”

Academician Sergei Glazyev, the economist who is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advisor on Eurasian integration, has escalated his pointed attacks on the Russian Central Bank for promoting speculators, failing to defend the ruble, and thus violating its Constitutional responsibilities.

The ruble is now hovering at around 78 to the dollar, a 50% collapse since its 2015 high of 50 to the dollar in May, and worse than its January 2015 collapse to 69 after the Central Bank floated the currency in December 2014, along with hiking interest rates sky-high.

“The purpose of the international reserves is to ensure the stability of the national currency—they exist for that very reason,” Glazyev told the official news agency TASS Jan. 21. “Our international reserves are twice the size of the amount of rubles in the economy; it is easy to stabilize the ruble exchange rate, and it would even have been possible to keep it fixed over the course of the past year.” These remarks were highlighted by the Financial Times, in an article gloating over the collapse of the ruble and the IMF’s projection that Russia’s GDP would shrink by 1% in 2016, driven by falling oil prices. The FT quoted Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina that she was unprepared to take such action because she claimed there was currently no risk to financial stability.

In the past ten days, however, Russian leaders have engaged in fierce debates over Finance Minister Anton Siluanov’s announcement of a need to cut the 2016 federal budget by 10% (half a trillion rubles); over Central Bank and Finance Ministry calls for rapid passage of bail-in legislation to allow the forced conversion of deposits into stock shares, in the many Russian banks now in serious trouble; and over the decision to raise cash by privatizing substantial stakes in remaining state-owned giants like the oil company Rosneft, Russian Railways, and VTB Bank. The privatization plan was put on the agenda by the government in 2012, but blocked at that time by Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin and then-head of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin.

Speaking Jan. 30 on a Russian News Service talk show, Glazyev charged that Russia’s foreign exchange market is in the hands of foreign speculators. He said that over the past decade, non-residents made three-fourths of all transactions in Russian financial markets, while in the foreign-exchange segment, non-resident participation is as high as 90%. Glazyev noted that the lure of speculation over productive investment is the “insane profit margins,” which are 80-100%. “Let me note,” Glazyev said, “that the U.S. sanctions do not apply to speculative capital, they relate to only long-term loans, which are banned from being given to our country. As for the speculators—take a loan for 30 days, speculate all you want. Given the fact that the Moscow Exchange is run by speculators, they bet on fluctuations, using credit leverage and insider information. The Moscow Exchange has become a primary profit center in the country, which, in the past year of operations, has become two times the size of GDP, and five times the volume of exports or imports. This despite the fact that economic activity in the country is falling. They are pumping money to the banks, pulling it from the real sector, where the profitability is 5-7%.”

Glazyev has just released a 500-page book, titled The Final World War: The U.S.A. Is Starting It, and Losing.” He presented it at a Jan. 20 Moscow press conference, hosted by the Izborsk Club, at which he was joined on the podium, for discussion, by former Internal Affairs Minister and Accounting Chamber head Gen. Sergei Stepashin and Senator Yevgeni Bushmin, a member of Putin’s United Russia party. During the 90-minute event, Glazyev charged that the Russian economy is in the hands of “incompetents,” and that the Chinese model offers a clear and viable alternative, which we could have chosen. Glazyev said that it was madness to minimize state investment in the economy on the grounds of a lack of money for this in the budget; that budget spending is not the proper source for investment, but that the Central Bank should create new credit and direct it, through regulation, into the real economy. He noted that the spending on the military, at least, has been a net plus for the real economy, driving innovation and preserving industrial capacity.

At the book presentation, Glazyev also pointed to BRICS as representing a better future. He warned in a Jan. 30 interview with Russian News Service (RNS) however, that Russia’s trade, including with BRICS members, is being thrown into disarray by the Central Bank’s policies. “I’ve been engaged in Eurasian integration,” he said. “We successfully developed, we made plans that the ruble will become a reserve currency, we persuaded our partners to trade in rubles…. Now our partners don’t want to hear about trading in national currencies. They believe that the depreciation of the currency is unfair competition.” He concluded by blasting the Central Bank: “The Central Bank is not fulfilling its Constitutional duty of ensuring the stability of the exchange rate. As a result, today we have halted many investment projects…. No one knows what the rate will be tomorrow. In these conditions it is impossible to plan the conduct of business, or to invest, or to conduct trade in rubles.”

Barack Obama yesterday gave his seal of approval, accompanied by promises of U.S. money and support, for a “peace plan” with the world’s largest cocaine cartel in Colombia, South America, which was cooked up by the British Empire as a giant step towards global legalization of every mind-destroying narcotic known and yet-to-be-concocted on the face of the earth.

The facts are these:

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos came to Washington, D.C., this week, to coordinate the final stage of his “peace” plan with the murderous FARC cartel, which he seeks to sign by March 23. In the White House reception which followed their Feb. 4 meeting, Santos thanked Obama for his “full and enthusiastic support” for the plan, reporting that Obama was one of the first persons to whom he had “confided” his intentions.

Santos had made public beforehand, in a Jan. 28 interview with Associated Press, that he was coming to ask the Obama administration to suspend U.S. drug warrants against the commanders of the FARC cartel. In other words, the FARC deal hangs on withdrawing the 2006 indictment by U.S. prosecutors of 50 FARC commanders for supplying half of the world’s cocaine!

There’s more. In 2014, the FARC leadership, which controls extensive marijuana, coca, and poppy plantations in the Colombian countryside, proposed at the negotiating table, that the government agree that the State identify possible industrial and artesanal uses of these narcotics, and then “regulate the production and market for coca leaf, poppy, and marijuana.”

Last December, Santos took the first steps towards that, signing a decree legalizing the cultivation, processing, R&D and export of “medical” marijuana. The plan is to turn marijuana exports into as big an “industry” as flowers or food, Colombia’s Health Minister told Bloomberg news in January. On Feb. 3, PharmaCielo — a Canadian company run by former executives of Britain’s notorious Philip Morris company and speculator James Rogers, co-founder of George Soros’s Quantum Fund — filed their application to start farming and producing marijuana in Colombia.

The operation, like Obama, who is the godfather of the whole deal, is 100% British. Santos is a protege of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, with whom Santos has consulted closely since he won the presidency in 2010. George Soros held a “very long meeting” with Santos in 2012 to coordinate the operation. The London School of Economics (LSE), Santos’s alma mater, is advising Santos on his “new” drug policies; on January 28, the heads of its “International Drug Policy Project” presented “a new international strategic framework for drug policies” at a major forum organized by Santos’s “Good Government Foundation.” The LSE authors say they intend to use their plan for “new models of legal regulation,” as being implemented now in Colombia, to shape the outcome of the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on Drugs in April 2016, which the British intend to have restore global free trade in the Empire’s mind-destroying narcotics.

In an interview with Russia’s Sputnik Deutschland, Horst Teltschik, former head of the chancellor’s office in Germany, said that “Europeans and Americans have for too long rejected talking to President Putin about Syria.”  There are differing views, Teltschik said, but there should have been discussion with Putin about how a peace regulation might be possible.  “The immediate consequences which we have in Europe, are these countless numbers of refugees.  That is, we have maximal interest in ending this conflict, so that the people do not flee.  For that, Russia does play a key role.”  Teltschik said that the vast majority of Germans want a dialogue with Russia, including on economic cooperation, and that the EU/NATO sanctions have done damage to both sides.

Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer said at a press conference, after meeting in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin last night, that “some ideas are needed to get out of the sanctions, either in one step or in several steps.” Russia also has to think about ways, for example, by doing its “homework” on the Ukrainian problem, Seehofer added.  Putin said that the 1,600 companies with Bavarian participation in Russia are active “in practically every sector — in electronics, engineering, the construction industry, and more.  Fifty percent of Germany’s investment projects in Russia are of Bavarian origin.  You are therefore a special guest here, and we are very pleased to see you.”

Seehofer responded:

This afternoon, Seehofer also met with the Russian cabinet ministers for industry and for economic policy, partly in preparation for another trip in the Autumn together with a high-powered delegation of German industrialists and bankers.

We are standing at a unique and unprecedented turning-point in history; not in the current decades or the past few years, but in fact history has moved into a new phase in the past several days.  No one yet knows what it will bring, whether for much better or for much worse; we must see to it that it is much better.

Even the people who are making the plays, don’t know what the plays are going to be, Lyndon LaRouche said today.

As LaRouche expressed it earlier, on Feb. 1:        

“We’re going into an area of change, which has no precedent for us, so far.  And therefore, the problem we have to consider, is to investigate in terms of our own opinions, to investigate those matters which have to be explored for this time.  Because it’s not going to be the same old, same old; it’s going to be much different.  It’s inevitable to be different.”

The only things we can rely on to guide our actions in these unique days of destiny, are the most deeply-known and most fundamental truths.  These are not what most of the falsely-educated would say they are,— what is known to each of us most intimately is the fundamental nature of man.  Not the “practical man,” but the man we meet only when man ventures out into space.

Or when man is actually functioning competently.

As Lyndon LaRouche said on Feb. 1:        

“We reached out to try to understand what there is about mankind; what is mankind; why does mankind exist?  What is the meaning of mankind’s existence?  And we find out that you have to go out into the galactic waters and places like that in order to discover and experience the meaning of the thing.  Mankind has, long before, understood that mankind is a unique creature, a unique creation; the process has been to try to extend our insight into what that means.  And that’s exactly where we have to start on these issues under these present conditions.  If you don’t do that, you’re not getting at the point; you’re making mistakes in explanations and so forth, and they’re wrong.  The point is, mankind is a creative force in the universe; but mankind has to learn how to behave in order to realize the role of being a force in the universe.”

These are not man-made but universal principles,— the principles we access through the space program. “The development of the space program was the development of man’s ability to shape the destiny of the planetary system.  With mankind’s intelligence, its intelligent role in dealing with the opportunities and challenges otherwise which far space represents; all the galactic watershed principles and things like that.  All of these things are things which are created not by man; they’re not the creations of man.  They involve the potential of creation by man; but they are actually representations of principles which create and improve the universe.  And therefore, it’s the development of the mental powers of creativity of that nature, which defines the real significance of mankind as such.  Without that, there is nothing; there is not something that is given to us, automatically; like something thrown down in the street.  These things which are creative, were created by the minds of persons, individuals; and those individuals were individuals who created the access to understand how the universe works.  So, the genius lies in the universe; not in the individual person.  It lies in the role of the individual person to do the work of building up the universe.”

John F. Kennedy once said, “Man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred.  The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join it or not, and it is one of the greatest adventures of all times, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.”

Indeed, the fact that the trans-Atlantic region, dominated by the British Empire, is now nothing other than an impotent rust-bucket, is summed up in the fact that it is none other than Barack Obama who cancelled the U.S. space program shortly after coming into office.  Meanwhile, China has forged ahead in space, and is right now inspiring its 1.4 billion people with the prospect of the future first (robotic) landing on the far side of the moon,— of which man has only had furtive glimpses so far,— in all of human history.  Now Americans will not succeed in anything unless they take inspiration from Russia and China,— regardless of what anyone might say about this.

“First of all, the issue here is, we have a contest between, on the one side, Putin, who is a leading figure in the world, as a whole, and what has happened also, in terms of China.  Now if you look at the picture of a map of society, you will say that most of the society we talk about, the trans-Atlantic community, is in collapse.  It is a failure.  It has been a failure.  As of now, it continues to be a failure.  And we are trying to kick it back into some kind of effectiveness.  But the fact is, we need to depend on the leading role of Russia and China.  Now Russia and China are a different part of the whole planet than the other parts, in general.  India is part of the group of this interest.

“But the trans-Atlantic community is really broken down.  It has no intrinsic skill for survival.  It can only gain, or regain, survival by following the leadership of Putin and China. And what goes along with them, is India is coming up rapidly with their work, and other work is happening in Asia.

“So therefore, the trans-Atlantic area of the planet is a fraud.  It’s a failure.  It would have to be reconstructed entirely.  The only place where we can get that reconstruction, is with China and Russia.  Without those nations, we don’t have a future.  What we have is, in fact, we have something that’s already dead.  It’s called the British Empire.  And the British Empire is dead.  Unfortunately, it’s not yet buried.  And it’s still walking around making demands.

“So I think the theme of our situation right now, is just that.  We have two leading elements, which are closely allied, Russia and China.  Europe is a disaster, otherwise; and much of the United States is an absolute disaster.

“So therefore, our job is to actually bring together the authority of what China and Russia represent, and their allies now.  And we have to sort of get rid of the rubbish, which can be found in abundance in the halls of our Congress.  I think Wall Street is a disease, but the disease has taken over the government of the United States.”

The problem is, what they’re doing,— that is the trans-Atlantic community,— is they’re committing suicide.  They are saying, “We, by committing mass-suicide, and by trying to kill as many people as possible otherwise,— are going to achieve a great victory!”  This thing is complete insanity.  It has to be called insanity.  People say, “But it’s not insane,— we intend this!  Therefore it’s not insane!”

And the dark side of the Moon is coming into view.

You have no other option: you have to accept the means which could be the option,— and that’s the only hope for mankind.

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