Author: Alicia

Lyndon LaRouche, in discussion with his Policy Committee on Wednesday, January 27, delivered some powerful advice to Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley, who has earned the hatred of Wall Street by pushing for the immediate reinstatement of Glass Steagall, the convening of a new Pecora Commission to probe the serious crimes of Wall Street executives, and other measures in the spirit and tradition of Franklin Roosevelt’s emergency 100 Days program.

LaRouche urged O’Malley to stick to his straightforward focus on the Wall Street menace and his action plan for taking down Wall Street. LaRouche described O’Malley, the former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Governor, as the only candidate of significance that has said anything that fits the purpose of the United States. “He’s the best we’ve got at this point in time,” LaRouche declared. LaRouche candidly noted that O’Malley’s only real weakness is that he does not yet see himself as a leading candidate, and he believes he is short of the needed support to emerge as the Democratic nominee. “He is not certain he has the authority to shoot out as a leading candidate,” LaRouche observed.

LaRouche emphasized that the two other Democratic presidential candidates—Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders—are unacceptable. Hillary Clinton, LaRouche noted, has been going downhill ever since her capitulation to President Barack Obama. Her record, from that point on, has been a fraud. LaRouche described Sanders as an “opportunist,” who will patch some policies together to fool people, but who, in the end, is not credible.

“If those two other candidates are dumped, as is both appropriate and likely, who is left? O’Malley,” LaRouche said. “The key objective is to get O’Malley to see that he has to step in now, and take the position as a leading candidate for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party right now—because the other two candidates are worthless.”

LaRouche made clear that if O’Malley takes that initiative, he can create the conditions for his success, and under those circumstances, he will have LaRouche’s full backing. “The other choices are a farce,” LaRouche reiterated.

LaRouche noted that his own name and history are well known among leading political circles and leaders within the American population. This is a wild card factor in this election.

LaRouche concluded that O’Malley will certainly go further by taking this bold and confident approach, and by sticking to the core issue that is also on the minds of the vast majority of Americans: Sink Wall Street.

LaRouche added that, throughout the trans-Atlantic region, there is such a mountain of toxic debt that it can never be paid, it should never be paid, and it must be immediately cancelled altogether. O’Malley’s call for immediate restoration of Glass Steagall is precisely the needed measure. Then you can do what FDR did: Issue Federal credits to create millions of productive jobs—with not a penny of obligation to Wall Street attached.

I’m interested, tell me more

Helga Zepp-LaRouche gave the following remarks to the EIR Forum at the National Press Club on Jan. 26.  She was preceded by Thomas Wysmuller, a former NASA meteorologist and activist with “The Right Climate Stuff,” an alliance of retired NASA astronauts, scientists, and engineers who are fighting against the fraud of man-made catastrophic climate change. EIR‘s Michael Billington was the forum’s moderator.

TRANSCRIPT

The following is a transcript of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s remarks. The transcript of Mr. Wysmuller’s remarks and the question and answer period will be available soon.

MICHAEL BILLINGTON:  Now we’re going to hear from one of the people Tom was referring to, who has been subjected to many international efforts to prevent her name and her husband’s name from being known; but as I’m sure she will tell you, this is breaking wide open right now.  And we will hear it.  Helga LaRouche.

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Well, I will try to be brief; I have a hard time doing that.  Obviously, the question is, why is such a report as you just discussed, how is this possible?  Why?  What is the motive?  Why would you go through the effort of falsifying data of trying to squash an honest debate among scientists?  And I think once one would pursue that question to the end, one would come to the conclusion of my presentation, which I want to put in the beginning; and that is, that the entire trans-Atlantic region — and I’m fully aware where I’m saying this; namely, in Washington D.C. — is run by very destructive policies and very destructive forces.

Now, let me start with one which should be of the biggest concern of anybody who wants to outlive his lifespan; and that is that we are on the verge of thermonuclear war.  And contrary to the height of the Cold War, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or at other high points of the Cold War where people were concerned about the possible extinction of mankind; even if we are much closer to it, there is no public conscience, there is no public debate about it.  And only rare individuals, such as former Defense Secretary William Perry, or nuclear specialist Hans Kristensen, are warning of the possibility that the world could go to war.  Now, if you want to take it on the light side, the danger of accidental war is extremely high; simply because the normal kind of code of behavior, which existed even between Kennedy and Khrushchov is presently not there.  After the Ukraine crisis exploded, they cancelled the NATO-Russian consultations; an institution which was created to be there in times of crisis was abandoned.

However, I would take it a step further to say that the evolution of military doctrines in NATO, going from a Mutually Assured Destruction to the idea of a winnable first strike posture, which is what the missile defense system around the world actually is, which is what Prompt Global Strike is; and which is what the Air-Sea Battle doctrine against China is; is really, including the modernization of nuclear weapons in Europe, are all pointing in the direction of such a possibility.

Now, Russia and China have drawn their conclusions and they are basically also gearing up their arsenals; and William Perry was warning just a couple of days ago in the Boston Globe, that we are far advanced into a new arms race with nuclear weapons, which according to President Obama, he wants to spend $1 trillion in the next 30 years.  Which, given the condition of the world financial system, sounds a little bit ludicrous; but this is the danger.

And if it comes to a war, by intention because some people have the illusion that you can win a nuclear war, or by accident; I think civilization very well may not exist within minutes, hours, or at the latest weeks.  A nuclear winter would evolve, and that would possibly be the end of civilization.  And all the beautiful things mankind has accomplished so far would be in vain:  There would be nobody to even comment about it.  No historian, nobody making an archive about it; not even a museum. So that is the one danger.

The other danger which is in direct correlation with this, is the fact that the trans-Atlantic financial system is about to blow up in much bigger ways than the crisis of 2007-2008.  As you know, there was just the World Economic Forum in Davos, where people officially went through the usual kind of eclectic series of entertainment on different subjects; but behind closed doors or among themselves privately, there was an absolute panic.  And publicly it was expressed by the former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements, William White, who gave an interview to the Daily Telegraph; where he said that since there was nothing done to re-regulate the banking system since 2008, the world indebtedness today is such, this debt that can neither be repaid nor serviced.  And that people who think they own a lot of money in this virtual world of finance, may wake up to very unpleasant surprises; namely, that it could evaporate in one minute.

So obviously, the measures, the so-called “tool box” which the financial institutions came up with after the 2008 Lehman Brothers/AIG crisis, was what?  It was quantitative easing, it was bail-outs, it was various kinds of measures to basically turn private gambling debt into public state debt.  And therefore, you have now a state debt crisis. And the recent developments which came in with Dodd-Frank and appropriate legislation in the EU Commission to go for bail-in, they called this the Cyprus model. This happened three years ago in Cyprus, where basically banks went bankrupt and then they confiscated the amounts of money in the accounts of either people who had their savings there, or had shares of the banks, or were holding bonds.  And this was basically expropriated by 50%.

Now, Dijsselbloem, the Finance Minister of Holland, who is also the head of the Eurogroup, at that time said this Cyprus model is the blueprint for the entire Eurozone; and legislation was made.  As I said, Dodd-Frank, Article II in the United States has that provision; all the European governments made legislation in the meantime to go for that.  But the problem is — and this was just noted by Thomas Hoenig, who is the vice chairman of the FDIC in the United States, and similarly an unnamed EU official gave an interview to Reuters just three days ago — saying the problem is, this bail-in does not function; the banks have not been recapitalized enough to do it, and so they are not prepared. And furthermore, the amount which you could generate if you bail in all the accounts — business, private people — and go for additional bail-out measures, you would get approximately $18-20 trillion; the problem is, the outstanding derivative debt is about $2 quadrillion.

So, when William White says this debt will never be paid, and we have to have what he calls a Jubilee; pointing to the fact that in all great religions over the last 5,000 years, you had periodic debt write-offs when it became clear it was not payable. So, Mr. White is now a high-ranking member of the OECD, he’s the former chief economist for the Bank for International Settlements, and you can call it a Jubilee, you can call it a debt conference, writing down this debt, or you can call it Glass-Steagall.

Now, that’s just two of the situations.  But we are reaching now a breaking point in the trans-Atlantic civilization.  Let me emphasize two other aspects of why we are in a decaying, collapsing, destructive society both in the United States and in Europe.  In the United States, apart from the abysmal collapse of real production, you have a drug epidemic which was highlighted by several articles in the New York  Times in the last several weeks; based on a study from Princeton, and one from the CDC. Which shows that shockingly, that the death rate in the United States for white males in all age groups is increasing to such an effect that it outweighs and erases the progress in medicine.  In the age group of white Americans — not black, not Hispanic, but white Americans — between 24 and 35, the death rates from suicide, alcoholism, or drug overdose has increased 500%.  There are presently in all 3007 counties of the United States, there is an increase, a doubling, quadrupling of the suicide rate; there are 125 people per day committing suicide or dying from drug overdoses.  That is five people per hour; so, since we have been here, five people have died.  It’s one every 12 minutes; and it is a sign of a dying society.  This increase has happened since 2001, and you can think for yourself which Presidencies have been in charge since then.  And only by that figure, you can say that you do not have good government in the United States.

Now in Europe we have a slightly different problem.  We have a refugee crisis, which is detonating the EU.  As you know, last year there were almost 1 million refugees coming primarily from Syria, from Iraq; but now, it’s many people from Afghanistan, from Northern Africa.  And at the Davos conference, the director of Davos, Kurt Schwab, said that he thinks that if the present oil price collapse is not stopped, there will be soon 1 billion people coming to the shores of Europe; and I think that that is not an exaggeration at all.

So, naturally the causes of this refugee crisis are the failed policies of the British, of the United States; the failed wars based on lies in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya; the attempt to topple Assad in Syria; the war in Yemen.  And has this served the interest of the United States?  I don’t think so; I think it has damaged the United States and the reputation of the United States around the world.

Now, as you know, Chancellor Merkel did something right; she said, we welcome these people.  And she’s being criticized a lot for it; but at the moment when she said that, there was no other way, because you had thousands and tens of thousands of people being stuck in the Balkans between Macedonia, Croatia, Hungary. Because Hungary began to build a wall around its borders.  So, it was a humanitarian crisis of unbelievable dimensions; and there is such a thing as an asylum right guaranteed by the Geneva Convention, and by the UN Charter.  So Merkel did the right thing, and she did the right thing concerning the refugees; but obviously you have to change policy if you want to accommodate these refugees.

The result of the non-solidarity of the EU, all of Eastern Europe refuses to take one single refugee; the foreign minister of Austria just yesterday blasted Greece for not enforcing the security of the outer border of the EU.  And the Greek government very correctly said, “What do they want us to do?  Do they want us to shoot the refugees in their boats and drive them back into the ocean?”

And you all have seen these horrendous pictures where small children are caught between soldiers and barbed wire, razor wire. If this is not resolved in a human way, this is the moral end of Europe; and anybody who is any good has understood that perfectly well.

OK. However, fortunately, this is not the totality of the picture.  Because you have right now, two universes:  You have the trans-Atlantic world which is collapsing, and you have a completely different kind of political system emerging, coming primarily from China.  And don’t believe any China-bashing which you have read in the Washington Post or the New York Times. I have been occupying myself with China for the better part of 45 years or so, and I can assure you, that China right now is not only an economic miracle; the little news about the so-called Chinese stock exchange collapse triggering all these problems in the Atlantic world is complete nonsense.  Because the real economy of China is doing excellently, and you will see in the second half of 2016, that all the many, many investments in real economy — Xi Jinping was just on a trip to the Middle East; he went to Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Egypt. The total volume of investments is between 55 and 100 billion, only with these three countries.  And if you look at the large amount of Chinese investments in many, many countries, in Latin America, in Asia, in Africa, in Eastern Europe, you will see that that will be an economic engine which will remain there for the next several years.

However, even more importantly, China, a little bit more than two years ago, offered a fundamentally new policy:  the New Silk Road.  Now, the New Silk Road is the idea, in the tradition of the ancient Silk Road of the Han Dynasty of 2,000 years ago, to further economic cooperation, scientific exchange of ideas, cultural ideas, and to promote a new infrastructure integration of the whole planet.  I think that this has affected the policy of the BRICS; it is right now moving forward very quickly, and you have a strategic partnership of China, Russia, India, and many countries cooperating closely.  Like, for example, now between China and Iran, you have an increased activity along these lines among many countries, including China and Greece; China and East European countries that turned to China to have fast train systems being built by China; and many investments in Africa and in other areas of the world.

Now, should that be regarded as a threat by the United States?  Only if you believe that the maintenance of a unipolar world is the only way to go, at a point when a multipolar world is already a reality.  The idea that there has to be a unipolar world and that you have to eliminate, through a regime change, every country in the world which does not submit to such an order, is the guarantee that we will blow ourselves up as a civilization.  What China has offered, and Xi Jinping offered that to President Obama at the APEC meeting in 2014, in Beijing, he said: We offer to the United States and other major powers to cooperate in a “win-win” cooperation, to transform the world economy.

Now, to my knowledge Obama has not answered that.  But this is now becoming a realistic possibility, because we have published this report, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge”:  Because we have been working on this New Silk Road policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was our answer to the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany, to the end of the Iron Curtain, we proposed in ’91, to connect Europe and Asia through so-called “infrastructure corridors.”  And we have campaigned for this policy for 25 years, and therefore, we were naturally extremely happy when Xi Jinping in 2013 said, New Silk Road is now the Chinese policy. As a matter of fact, we were extremely happy, and said that is exactly how we will get out of this mess.

And then, we started to make our report, and you can see here,  — you can’t see it now, because I was not so industrious as you!  This is a map of all the corridors, bridges, tunnels which will eventually unite all the continents of the world, and bring unity to all the different development areas of the planet.

So we have said, since 2012, at least, that the only way how you will end terrorism in the Middle East and bring peace to this tortured region of the world, is you have to have  — I hate to call it “Marshall Plan,” because “Marshall Plan” has always the connotation of a Cold War dimension to it — but just to use the word so that people get an idea that there has been examples of successful reconstruction of war-torn regions.  I would like to call it the extension of the Silk Road to the Middle East. Which is already now uniting Central Asia; it’s moving into South Asia; a corridor is being built by China through Pakistan to the Persian Gulf.  So, in 2012, we held a conference in Frankfurt proposing a Silk Road Marshall Plan for Southwest Asia, the Middle East, the Near East, and Africa, as the only way how you can — you know, how do you end terrorism?

You know, terrorism has now been a menace:  We have seen it in Paris, two times last year; the Charlie Hebdo massacre, then the horrible massacre in Paris later in the year; there have been terrorist events all over the planet, practically in all countries.  So, will you stop this horror show by bombing ISIS or al-Qaeda?  Well, you have to do something.  And I think the best approach right now is what has been negotiated by Secretary of State Kerry together with [Foreign Minister] Lavrov in the Vienna conference which was very successful in getting Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and other parties of the Middle East at one table, the resumption of this conference was delayed because there were still some tensions, because Saudi Arabia didn’t want certain oppositions groups from Syria; the Turks didn’t want the Kurds; but, I think, you know, if Russia, the United States, China, and the other major powers of the Middle East sit together and say “we will militarily eliminate ISIS, but then you need something else.”

Because you need a reconstruction program which gives real hope to the people in the Middle East to dry out the environment out of which al-Qaeda and Al Nusra, and ISIS and so forth have been recruiting.  And only if you put a Marshall Plan, a Silk Road Marshall Plan into the region, where all these countries, Russia, China, India, Iran, Egypt, Germany, Italy, France, the United States, work together and say: We will take the entire region from the Caucasus to the Persian Gulf, from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, as one region, and we put in real development. We declare a war on the desert; we create, you know, new water! Because if you ever have flown over that region, this is all desert.  There is not one little oasis — nothing!  So you need to have large amounts of ocean water desalinated, which is only possible through nuclear energy; you need to tap into the moisture in the atmosphere, which you can do through ionization; you can use aquifers and other methods.  And then, you can develop agriculture.  You can develop forestry.  You have to put in infrastructure, infrastructure as dense as it is, for example, in Germany.  Germany is a perfect example of a very well-developed infrastructural country.  Then you can put in new cities, you can build industries.

And you give the people of the region a new hope.  A hope that they can have a future, that they can become engineers, that they can become scientists, that it’s worth to have a family. And that is how you bring peace to the Middle East and to Africa.

Now, I have said this in many speeches, and people have said, this is completely utopian.  Who should pay for this? Well, but I believe that if you have a breakdown of an old paradigm and you have a good plan, I believe that then you can be successful, simply because you are the only one who has the right idea.  And I am totally flabbergasted and surprised, but I have to announce that one of the persons in Germany, who is not — and I emphasize not —  on my favorite list, Wolfgang Schäuble, is now coming out for a Marshall Plan in the Middle East!  He did that in a very surprising speech in Davos, where, to the surprise of everybody, he said, “well, it should be obvious that we have to invest many billions in the region, that we have to form a ‘coalition of the willing’ to do so,” in a beautiful reversal of the coalition of the willing of Bush, you know, who wanted it to make war; so Schäuble, of all people, wants to have now a “coalition of the willing” to reconstruct the Middle East.  And this is now being picked up by newspapers  in Germany.

And you know, I always said, when there is no reason you can appeal to, the only thing which causes political change, is what I call the “policy of the burning shirt.”  That when people realize that their shirt is getting a little bit hot on their behind, they start to move.  And I can assure you, this refugee crisis right now, is exactly that, because the EU is about to detonate.  If they build, again, borders around all national countries, then the Schengen Agreement is out of the window, and everybody is now debating openly if there is no Schengen, then the European Monetary Union doesn’t make any sense; the Eurozone will collapse; and very likely also the EU.  Because then you have no raison d’être  any more for this alliance as it developed from Maastricht to Lisbon.

So I think we have now a tremendous situation.  I think we need to have a change in paradigm.  I think people have to recognize, and you may not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to think about it, that if we stay in the old paradigm of geopolitical confrontation, with Russia, with China, the likelihood that we will not exist as a civilization is very high.

If, however, we look at the longer arc of the evolution of mankind, well, mankind has been only around for a little time, a few million years.  The record in terms of writing and other readable artifacts is, maybe 10,000 years. And just think, what a tremendous development mankind has made in the last 10,000 years, from the Stone Age, where you would use a stone to kill your neighbor; now you have a smart phone of the same size, you can have international conferences, you see the people you’re talking to around the globe.  And in 10,000 years, people will say, “Oh, these people with their ‘smart phones’ they thought that was already a big accomplishment,” because they will be communicating from one galaxy to the other, and look back at our period as the “Stone Age.”

So you have to have a tremendous sense of optimism in mankind.  Mankind is the only species which can, again and again, change the knowledge about the physical universe, making discoveries, and I believe that there is a limitless ability for mankind to improve, both intellectually and morally.  I don’t think that people have to be so mean as they are right now.  I don’t think that the drug culture, with all the ugliness that goes along with it, is what should be the worthiness of man.

I think that if we combine an economic reconstruction program with a cultural Renaissance, that we will go into a completely new  era of civilization where man will be truly man! Truly beautiful!  We have made an addendum to this report which is called “The United States Joins the New Silk Road.”  And it is the idea that, the Silk Road should not only be built in China and Africa, but the United States, needs urgently a Silk Road development.  Has the United States a fast train system?  I don’t think so.  Has the United States a functioning airplane system? I think it’s getting a little bit shabby and old.

So why not build 50,000 km, or 35,000 miles, connecting the East Coast, the West Coast, the North and the South, through the maglev train, through other high-speed train systems, reconstruct some of the cities which ware falling apart; build some new cities!  Some beautiful cities in the South; to inspire people to go back to the Moon, to rebuild NASA, to go to Mars, just to find out why the universe is built the way it is it!

You know, this problem of the Sun is very urgent, because the Sun in 2 billion years will not make it so comfortable on the planet Earth, so we have think, how, we as a species can live on as a species in the Galaxy and beyond.

So I think what we need to do, is we have to have an honest, fearless discussion about the change of a paradigm.  And I think we have to recognize that good government means also, to have a beautiful culture which is uplifting people.  I named the Schiller Institute, “Schiller Institute,” because I believe that the image of man of Friedrich Schiller is the most beautiful I have found on the planet.  And he basically said, Art is only art if it is beautiful and if it ennobles people.

So we need to combine this economic reconstruction with a Classical Renaissance of Classical culture, and then start a dialogue of the high phases of all cultures:  Confucianism in China, which fortunately has a Renaissance right now, which has the whole country excited; you know, people in China are completely optimistic.  They believe in the government — can you imagine that?  They have trust in the government? So, they’re in a good shape.  China has produced beautiful poetry, painting, Mencius, other great neo-Confucian thinkers.

India has produced many high points:  The Gupta period.  The Arab world was once in a much better shape during the Abbasid Dynasty when Baghdad was the cultural capital of the world. You had the Italian Renaissance, you had the Andalusian Renaissance. If we revive all of these high points of cultures, I’m absolutely certain that we can create a new Renaissance of human civilization, this time, on a completely different set of axioms than the present world of our decaying trans-Atlantic world.

And I want to stop here.  But I think, if you think about it, we are on the verge of calamity beyond believe.  But we can turn it around, if we go to FDR policies, Glass-Steagall, shut down Wall Street, make a new credit system, get production going. And it will be easy.  

Barack Obama’s lavish pre-debate praise for Hillary Clinton, in his Politico interview today, was presumably prompted by Wall Street orders, to try to save Clinton’s
campaign as an obviously pro-Wall Street mouthpiece of Obama.

Obama may have gone too far, when he said that going to war in Libya was a close call for him, and he was helped into doing it by Clinton’s determination. One day earlier, Obama’s former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that Clinton was the only one in the White House team who definitely saw the Libya war “as for regime change.”

Remember Libya – now an ungoverned terrorist safe haven and arms source for terrorists in Syria, as the result of Obama’s illegal assassination of Libya’s head of state. This is the truth about Libya, which Hillary has refused to admit.

Pro-Wall Street, pro-war Hillary Clinton has got to be dumped as a prospective Democratic candidate. Wall Street’s accelerating financial blowup, with Hillary as its creature, is further discrediting her.

The candidate whom the Wall Street Journal declared, right from the start, “Wall Street’s Enemy No. 1,” is Martin O’Malley, who campaigned from the start last May on reinstating FDR’s Glass-Steagall Act, Wall Street’s wolf’s bane.

Wall Street’s enemy is not Senator Bernie Sanders, who has been fraudulently promoted to take that role, and is a fraud in it.

EIR Founding Editor Lyndon LaRouche stated today that “It is obvious that O’Malley is the right guy. His views have a certain degree of convergence with my own views on this subject, the necessity to shut down Wall Street before we are destroyed as a nation by it. I would go fully out for O’Malley in contrast to the jerks in the race, who need to be dumped. That’s includes Trump. That includes Hillary.”

O’Malley, LaRouche added, has the right policy on the most crucial matter; he has needed to have the conviction to carry it out, including the conviction of his own
powers to carry it out.

Look at the results of Wall Street’s devastation of the United States since they got the miserable Presidents Bush and Obama into office. Look at the shocking reports emerging, week after week, on spiraling heroin addiction, suicides, rapidly rising death rates across the entire non-Hispanic white population since 2000.

Why, LaRouche asked, are a rising number of Americans committing mass suicide in these ways since Bush and Obama have been in office? Because they’ve
accept marginal conditions of life, imposed on them by a collapsing Wall Street.”

Dump the jerks and shut Wall Street down. Let’s organize a Presidency.

With the Jan. 19 publication by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of “Drug Poisoning Mortality: United States, 2002-2014,” public attention has been focused on the nationwide epidemic.  Local authorities have been battling the massive increase in heroin addiction in every part of the country.  A Google News sort on “heroin epidemic” turned up over 133,000 news articles, mostly from local and state publications facing the alarming increases in deaths and crime.

New York State has released data showing the skyrocketing of heroin deaths, which went from 923 statewide in 2003 to over 2,300 in 2014.  Staten Island has the highest rate of heroin deaths of all of the five boroughs of New York City.

Ohio State Attorney General Mike DeWine convened an emergency statewide meeting last week, in which he warned that the state is now seeing 3-4 overdose deaths from heroin every week.

In New Hampshire, where the first presidential primary election will take place soon, voters say that the number one issue on their minds is the drug epidemic, trumping the major other concerns, including jobs and the overall economic collapse.

Huffington Post reported that Mexican drug cartels are flooding with heroin those areas of the United States where the documented rates of prescribing OxyContin and other doctor- prescribed opiates are the greatest.  The Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, was recently listed on the Forbes magazine richest families list, with a personal fortune of $14 billion, almost exclusively based on domestic and foreign sales of the opioid. 

Quite unexpectedly for most, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble took the occasion of a panel discussion on “Europe’s Future” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 21, to propose that a “coalition of the willing” invest “billions” in the development of the Middle East and Africa. This comes less than a week after Zepp-LaRouche’s recent article on the subject, with the headline: “Germany Needs a Liberation Coup: A Silk Road Marshall Plan.”

We will have to “invest billions in those regions,” in fact, “much more than we thought,” in order to stem the flow of people fleeing to Europe, he said. “We need a Marshall Plan for the regions that are being destroyed,” Schäuble stated. And given the refusal of a number of European countries to accept imposed quotas on refugees, he proposed a “coalition of the willing” to finance the development plan, and pledged support from Germany. He even agreed with Greek PM Tsipras that it would be shameful for Europe to turn itself into a “fortress” and refuse entrance to all those outside the borders.

Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche has long proposed a Marshall Plan approach to Southwest Asia and Africa, and is the co-author of an EIR Special Report on the World Land-Bridge project which includes those same regions. In an international overview article written Jan. 22, she asked what one should think of the German Finance Minister’s apparent about-face on the issue.

“Has Schäuble of all people—the super-EU European and the bankers’ man, the one who demands discipline from Greece, the Troika’s spokesman for austerity—suddenly discovered that he has a soft spot for the development of these countries? In any case—France’s King Henry IV believed long ago that, for the sake of a good cause, everyone need not be motivated by the highest ideal; some people won’t achieve a goal until they feel their own shirts burning. Because Schäuble knows that without Schengen—the agreement to abolish border controls wtihin the EU—there is no euro, and without the euro there is no EU. Since there is no solidarity in the EU, then it’s better not to exert pressure, which only makes the failure of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty more obvious,  but just count on ‘the willing.'”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche goes on, in her article, to stress the importance of Chinese President Xi’s recent visit to the Middle East and his offer to have those countries join the New Silk Road policy. That, at a time when the overindebted financial system is headed toward a new mega-crash. Schäuble, as Finance Minister, is well aware of that fact. Therefore, if he is serious about a Marshall Plan for the Middle East and Africa, he has to promote Glass-Steagall reforms in all of Europe, as the only way to organize an orderly write-off of the toxic debts and to develop the real economy.

That, concludes Helga Zepp-LaRouche, is the test of whether Saul has really converted to Paul.

It is well-known that four of the too-big-to- fail (TBTF) U.S. banks—Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America—are sitting on 91% of the $192.2 trillion in derivatives “officially listed” on the books of FDIC-insured commercial banking units. When the derivatives on the books of their holding companies are added, these four have 93% of $242 trillion in nominal exposure to derivatives.

But a column by Pam and Russ Martens warns that the exposure of a fifth TBTF institution, Morgan Stanley, poses an even greater risk to American households. Morgan Stanley holds $31 trillion in derivatives, including $1.6 trillion in credit derivatives.  But unlike the other banks holding the lion’s share of derivatives, Morgan Stanley is far more involved in retail brokerage accounts and has 15,771 retail brokers as of July 2015 data from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. With $404 billion under management, Morgan Stanley has more “mom and pop” clients, investing their retirement and other personal savings, which means that a blowout of its derivatives portfolio can have devastating consequences for an unspoken number of households.

During the 2008 blowout, Morgan Stanley got more than $2 trillion in bailouts from the Fed (they got one lump sum bailout of $107.3 billion on Sept. 29, 2008 alone).  Since July 2015, Morgan Stanley stocks have plunged by 38%.

The massing of evidence of the genocidal assault against the American people is the single most damning reason why President Barack Obama must be immediately removed from office, as the first step towards shutting down everything for which Wall Street and London stands. 
 
While the heroin epidemic was given a national spotlight when the New York Times prominently reported on the Jan. 19, 2016 findings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, declaring a heroin epidemic in every county in the country, state and local authorities have been on an emergency alert for many months, as the body count piles up, and the death rate among young adults and middle aged Americans from all walks of life, all socio-economic groupings and all job categories skyrockets out of control.  A survey of local media in every part of the country reveals a real sense of panic over the heroin epidemic, which has infected every community at an accelerating rate under Obama.
 
This opium war against the American people is being run directly out of the Oval Office, where President Obama has given the British Empire’s Dope, Inc. a carte blanche to carry out a multi-faceted menticide and genocide against the American people.  Obama’s policy of non-prosecution of too-big-to-fail banks that launder the drug money for the Mexican, Colombian and Afghan cartels is an obvious impeachable crime.  This constitutes nothing less than complicity in mass murder (starting with the 47,000 Americans who died of drug overdoses in 2014 alone) on the part of the President of the United States.
 
More to the point, the conscious mass kill policy is the clearest evidence, in the words of Lyndon LaRouche that “The cannibals are taking over.”
 
Obama has presided over a program of drug legalization, authored by one of his earliest political patrons, George Soros, a notorious British agent whose hedge funds operate offshore, in the Dutch Antilles and outside the reach of American laws. 
 
Obama has also been caught, red handed, in the mass kill of citizens of Flint, Michigan, who have been systematically poisoned with lead from the Flint River water, with the full knowledge of Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency and the control board installed by the Michigan Governor.  EPA is a lesser agency of the Federal government—Obama is responsible above all others.  The people of Puerto Rico are being put through the same mass kill policy, courtesy of Obama.
 
Obama’s slavish loyalty to Wall Street and London, as opposed to the American people, has brought on countless other disasters, with the biggest disasters coming in the immediate days and weeks ahead.  The five biggest too-big-to-fail banks hold over $250 trillion in worthless derivatives, which, in the case of Morgan Stanley, among others, have been spread out to households across America.  This is mass robbery, on the same scale as the Obama-planned bail-in looting—and this gigantic bubble is now exploding out of control.
 
94 million working age Americans have been excluded from the labor force and are dying.  The rate of acceleration of the loss of labor power has increased exponentially under Obama’s watch, while he lies incessantly about the so-called “recovery.”

 The same British assault is being escalated by the day against the nations of continental Europe, as well.  Europe has reached a breaking point, between the total disintegration of the banking system, accelerated by the ECB’s bail-in program, and the crisis spilling into Europe from the Middle East and North Africa, where a million refugees have already sought safe haven in Europe, and millions more are expected to arrive.  These refugees are fleeing the British-Obama instigated population wars, using regional proxies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey to create the conditions for a new Hundred Years War.  The crisis has reached an existential point, where the European Union is about to dissolve, if the Shengen open border system is ended, and where even Germany’s hated Finance Minister Schaeuble is calling for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, echoing Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in the hopes of saving Europe from total chaos and collapse.
 
The entire trans-Atlantic system, in fact, is going through the process of social and economic disintegration, while major parts of Eurasia, under the leadership of China, Russia and India, are pursuing a new paradigm of “win win” cooperation and real growth.  Chinese President Xi Jinping’s just-concluded trip to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran is indicative of the prospects for mankind’s advancement—if the assault by the British Empire and its proxies can be defeated now.
 
The real assault against the American people is being conducted on a cultural level, attacking the cognitive powers of the population through drugs, mass media brainwashing and enhanced techniques like the killer point-and-shoot video games that have addicted so many of the nation’s youth, to the point that they have no productive skills.
 
As the war is principally cultural, the solution is cultural, as well.  As the recent two Schiller Institute performances of Handel’s Messiah in New York City, attended by over 1,000 people illustrated, great classical music, performed in the proper tuning, can have an extraordinary uplifting impact on people.  The revival of classical music is one of the most powerful weapons to inspire and elevate a population that has been beaten down and demoralized by a century of British assault, dating back to the era of Lord Bertrand Russell, HG Wells and the Huxley brothers, on the American people.
 
Step number one for defeating this cultural assault on America is the removal of Obama from the White House—now.

Yes, Obama’s got to go, let’s do this.

The New York Times reported Saturday on a longstanding CIA partnership with Saudi Arabia, whose current manifestation is the joint program to arm Syrian rebels, a program that President Obama authorized in early 2013.  According to the Times account, under that secret program called “Timber Sycamore,” the Saudis provided funding and purchased weapons for existing Syrian rebel factions, and the CIA trained the fighters in secret camps in Jordan.

The Times account, however, was carefully written to exclude certain known features, including the existence of the Anglo-Saudi “Al Yamamah” deal, dating back to 1985, in which the British and the Saudis used an oil-for-arms barter deal to create massive offshore “black” accounts, used to bankroll and arm a wide range of global insurgencies.  While the CIA-Saudi intelligence partnership is unquestionably accurate, it is a subsumed “junior partner” feature of the much more solid Anglo-Saudi alliance.

According to the New York Times account, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who ran Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate (GID) at the start of the Syrian destabilization, purchased large amounts of weapons in Eastern Europe and provided them, with CIA assistance, to the various Syrian rebel groups, including groups that were actually al-Qaeda fronts.

Again, the Times told a half-truth.  In addition to Eastern Europe, there was a well-documented flood of weapons that went to Syrian rebels from Benghazi, Libya, in a joint British/American intelligence program that was partly exposed with the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. mission there.  Those weapons, confiscated after the overthrow and assassination of Qaddafi, were funneled through Qatari and Turkish channels into Syrian rebels, including al-Qaeda and ISIS.  Former U.S. DIA head Gen. Michael Flynn has publicly exposed the Obama Administration’s own involvement in arming the Syrian rebels, despite DIA warnings that this would only strengthen the hard-core jihadists, and could lead to the creation of a caliphate in the Syrian-Iraqi border region.

When Prince Bandar was bounced as head of the GID, the program, the Times reported, was turned over to Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Kingdom’s Interior Minister and Crown Prince. Bin Nayef was close with CIA Director John Brennan, dating back to Brennan’s tenure in the late 1990s as CIA Station Chief in Riyadh.

The Times account made clear that the Saudi-CIA partnership dated back much further.  In the late 1970s, when the CIA was under intense Congressional scrutiny and restricted in its operations, the Saudis created what was called the “Safari Club,” a multinational covert intelligence program, involving Morocco, Egypt and France, to carry on some of the CIA’s covert operations in Africa.

During the Reagan years, as is well known, the Saudis poured money into the Afghan mujahideen, matching U.S. Congressional funding dollar for dollar.  The Saudis also, courtesy of Bandar, gave $32 million to the Contras, through Cayman Islands bank accounts. The mujahideen funding ran through CIA-managed bank accounts in Switzerland.  Those accounts were, in fact, likely part of the “Al Yamamah” program as well, which was a major source of money to the Afghan war against the Soviets.

The Times story barely mentioned the fact that the Saudis have been a major source of funding to ISIS and Nusra throughout the Syrian war, which shows how the Anglo-Saudi combine plays both sides in the conflict, to maximize the death toll and create permanent chaos.  The Times briefly cited William McCants, a former State Department counterterrorism advisor, pointing to the hypocrisy of partnering with the Saudis in any kind of anti-jihad coalition, since the Saudis are the biggest patrons of the jihadi terror. 

During the visit of President Xi Jinping to Iran, the two countries agreed to establish a comprehensive strategic relationship and to coordinate their national development strategies in line with the Chinese program of the Silk Road Economic Belt. President Xi is the first head of state to visit Iran in the aftermath of the Iran nuclear agreement. He brought with him a large political delegation which includes three vice ministers as well as  a large business delegation. President Xi met with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, with Speaker of the Majlis Ali Larijani, and with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A recurring theme, underlined in the letter of President Xi, published in Iranian papers on the eve of his visit, has been the centuries’ old relationship between the two countries dating back to the ancient Silk Road, which was as much a part of Iran’s historical narrative as it is of China’s. And this has become a consistent motif in the course of Xi’s visit.  In the joint statement issued by the two parties, Iran gives full support to the development of the One Belt, One Road, with the two sides signing a “Memorandum of Understanding on Jointly Promoting the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.” China also agrees to support Iran’s “Development Plan” and the two countries will work to formulate a 25-year Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement on their two respective development agendas.

The communiqué also calls for annual meetings of the foreign ministers as well as more frequent meetings of the deputy ministers. There will be an increase in the military-to-military relationship and also increased exchanges between the two countries’ parliaments, local governments, and student exchanges. They will also cooperate in fighting terrorism and cyber-crime. China also pledges to support Iran’s application for membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. China has also pledged to assue that the Iranian nuclear agreement and the end to the sanctions regime becomes a reality. The two also agreed to work together to establish a peaceful environment in the Middle East and to oppose sanctions as a weapon. 

Speaking to the Arab League Thursday in Cairo following his historic visits to Tehran, Riyadh, and Cairo, Chinese President Xi Jinping presented an offer of peace and development, accompanied with specific aid, investments, loans, and joint projects that total more than $55 billion to the region, including the Palestinians.  CCTV broadcast the speech live with simultaneous English translation, and other Chinese TV stations broadcast in Arabic.

Xi opened by saying that the Chinese “believe in hope and encourage it by peace,” and framed the speech entirely in the “One Belt-One Road” policy. “The key to overcoming difficulties is to accelerate development. Turmoil in the Middle East stems from the lack of development, and the ultimate solution will depend on development, which bears on everyone’s well-being and dignity. It is a race against time and a struggle between hope and disillusion. Only when young people are able to live a fulfilled life with dignity through development can hope prevail in their heart. Only then will they voluntarily reject violence, extremist ideologies and terrorism.”  “Outside nations cannot impose solutions, and China will not look for a “proxy,” he said.  Instead, China is offering a “win-win” strategy for all the countries of the region based on mutual interests, Xi said. He also referred to the injustice toward the Palestinian people, reiterating China’s support for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, and announced 50 million yuan ($7.6 million) for the Palestinians.

He described four areas of closer Chinese-Arab relations:

First, on terrorism and extremism, he said the cause can’t be linked to a single country or a single religion.  “We should treat the symptom, but also the cause.”  Therefore, China created a research institute on Chinese-Arab reform in China, to which 100 “famous people” from Middle East religious institutions will be invited.  China will also provide US$300 million in law enforcement to help the Arab countries fight terrorism.

Second, work on structural reform, innovation, and a push for “oil-plus” trade relations.  China would like to see agreements for the long-term purchase of oil and a long-term energy strategy cooperation that involves innovation.  He told them, “China’s investment is entering the fast lane,” and the emphasis will be on manufacturing exports and transportation.

Third was “energy capacity cooperation,” and using Chinese progress in developing efficient industries such as auto production, that can create jobs in the Arab world.  He referenced the $15 billion in investments just signed in Egypt, along with: US$10 billion in loans to Arab countries for manufacturing capacity, and US$20 billion for UAE and Qatar for high-end industries.  Another US$10 billion is going for other projects.  China and the Arab States have also set up a training center for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and clean energy.

The fourth area is “civilizational exchanges” based on joint respect for cultures.  Cooperation in this area will result in discovering “more areas for win-win cooperation through the One Belt-One Road.”  China is inviting 100 scholars and experts and will provide 1,000 positions for Arab youth leaders to visit China.  They will also invite parties to decide on 10,000 scholarships and 10,000 positions for trainees in China.Under another project, China and the Arab States will launch a “Silk Road Book Translation” program for the translation of 100 Chinese and Arab classics into each other’s language. “The Chinese and Arab civilizations each have their own systems and distinctive features,”  Xi said, “yet they both embody the common ideals and aspirations of mankind for development and progress, and they both champion such values as moderation, peace, forgiveness, tolerance and self-restraint.” 

Following his talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo on Jan. 20, Chinese President Xi Jinping, in a joint statement with al-Sisi, said: “The two sides have agreed to undertake 15 projects …  mainly in sectors like electricity, transport and infrastructure.  The total investment in these projects is US$15 billion.  These projects will offer a new impetus to the economic development of Egypt,”Shanghai Daily reported yesterday.  Egyptian state television had broadcast the live signing of the agreements at a presidential palace in Cairo in the presence of the two leaders. Thursday, addressing the Arab League at Cairo, the Chinese president touched upon the agreements saying, in Egypt, China has committed $15 billion [us] for capacity cooperation and building infrastructure.

Heralding an era of closer political and economic ties, officials from the two countries signed 21 agreements that could see China significantly ramp up investments in the most populous Arab country, Shanghai Daily noted.  The deals span several infrastructure investments, from power generation to the first phase of a new Egyptian administrative capital unveiled last year.  They also include a US$1 billion financing deal for Egypt’s central bank and a US$700 million loan to state-owned National Bank of Egypt.

Meeting Egyptian President al-Sisi, Xi said China and Egypt had developed a deep friendship based on mutual respect and expressed China’s backing for Egypt running its affairs without outside interference.  “What path a country or people chooses cannot be separated from historical and cultural traditions or the reality of economic development,” Xi said. 

The Arabic U.A.E. newspaper Al-Ittihad issued a wonderful column by Mohammed Aref, scientific and technology advisor, on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran, giving full credit to the New Silk Road Lady Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute for this new visionary policy.

The column, titled “China’s 51st Century” (according to China’s historic record), gives a very poetic and exciting image of the tour by President Xi to the region and China’s emphasis on the New Silk Road and economic development in its policy declaration.

In 1997, Aref was the first Arab journalist to write a full-scale, full-page review of the first EIR Eurasian Land-Bridge Report, in the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat, for which he was the Scientific Editor.

After debunking the argument that China’s economy is in decline, Aref states: “China is redrawing the map of the world, turning the seven continents into six by making Asia and Europe one continent. ‘Let the world be, for no one can succeed in conquering the world and changing it,’ as the Chinese saying goes, and as expressed by the Chinese Foreign Ministry Arab Policy Paper which was issued last week, in which the Silk Road is revived which used to link Chinese with the Arab world for more than 2,000 years.  The road of Chinese wisdom is like a ‘Silk Road’ which connects the greatest continental Asian-European landmass, and extends between the shores of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans through infrastructures for agriculture, industry, trade, technology, science and culture.”

This is the concluding paragraph of Aref’s column:

“‘The Arab-Asian Land-Bridge: The Pulsating Heart of the New Silk Road’ was the tile of my report in a London newspaper in November 1997, and I never imagined then that this project, which was designed by the Schiller Institute, would be adopted by China and that the Chinese President would bring it with him to the Arab region this week.  Last September, Beijing celebrated the release of the Chinese version of the new report ‘The Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge.’  In the next month the Arabic version of the report will be published next week [sic], and is prepared by Hussein Askary, the Iraqi member of the Schiller Institute, which was established the German Academician Helga LaRouche, who is called by the Chinese ‘The Silk Road Lady,’ because she paved the way for the New Silk Road through hundreds of conferences and scientific and political seminars, and she ‘established the concept of the Eurasian Landbridge as a war prevention tool’ according to the Chinese Scholar Deng Yifan. Helga LaRouche and China are like the woman, about whom the Chinese proverb states: ‘The female always surpasses the male by her calmness, and she becomes fruitful even in her silence.’ And the other proverb: The Great Country is like the lower part of the river, where the earth of the world meets the female of the world [sic].”