Author: Spencer

The center of gravity of world affairs is in Manhattan this week and next, as world leaders arrive for the United Nations General Assembly, and President Obama intends to use the occasion to push for war. On Monday, Sept. 28, Obama, Russian President Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, French President Hollande, and Iranian President Rouhani will all be addressing the UN General Assembly. Unlike most recent UNGA sessions, this year’s events will be historic, as issues of war and peace will be on the table.

Russian President Putin has presented Obama with a fait accompli, with the intense Russian military deployments to Syria. The Russian deployment has preempted Obama’s plans to ally with Turkey and Saudi Arabia in establishing a no-fly zone for jihadists in northern Syria, aimed at the overthrow of the Assad government and the creation of a Salafist haven on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. That is now off the table, as the result of Putin’s bold and timely actions. In addition to the deployment of at least two squadrons of Russian MIG fighters to the Latakia area, Russian engineers have now arrived at the naval port of Tartous, to expand the facilities to accommodate larger Russian warships and supply ships. Putin has also ended Israel’s domination over Syrian air space, bluntly telling Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Monday that Russia will not allow Israeli planes to freely attack Hezbollah convoys inside Syrian territory.

The Russian moves forced Obama to allow his Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to establish a military-to-military channel of contact with Russian counterparts. U.S. intelligence sources report that Russian surveillance drones are already operating over Syrian territory where the U.S. has also been active. Some limited degree of “deconfliction” contact has already been established at the ground level, and some sane U.S. military circles are pushing for Russian-American intelligence sharing and eventual coordinated operations against the Islamic State and other jihadists.

Obama, however, will never accept such a sane policy. He is hell-bent on confrontation with Russia, and it can be expected that he will take some kind of irrational action in New York City (a Russian proposal for a face-to-face Obama-Putin summit has not yet been answered by the White House) to escalate the confrontation, rather than embrace the Russian offers of genuine counter-terrorist cooperation.

Lyndon LaRouche emphasized this week that the greatest danger in the present situation is that leading officials in Washington, including leading members of the U.S. Senate, have blocked out the reality of Obama’s narcissism and hatred for Putin. They fail to see the imminent danger of an insane Obama provocation against Russia, even though the signs are all there.

Obama has approved the deployment of a new generation of nuclear weapons to Europe. The B61-12 is nominally a tactical nuclear weapon, but the upgrades give it greater accuracy, and they can be launched from stealth bombers that can reach Russian borders. Germany’s national TV network has aired a documentary, showing that the Obama policy blurs the lines between conventional and nuclear warfare and greatly increase the danger of a war of annihilation with Russia. Germany is scheduled to receive 20 of the new B61-12 nuclear weapons, and later this year, German Luftwaffe combat planes will begin to be refitted to deploy those nuclear warheads—under U.S. orders.

General David Petraeus, now a military adviser to Obama, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee early this week, to promote the idea of the U.S. launching a bombing campaign against the Syrian Air Force. He has recently called for an open U.S. alliance with the Nusra Front, the official Al Qaeda franchise in Syria.

In anticipation of his White House summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Obama dispatched his Commerce Secretary, Penny Pritzker, to Seattle, to bully American business leaders, meeting with the Chinese President, into attacking China for unfair business practices. Pritzker has been sitting in on the private talks between Xi and the American businessmen—to make sure that the Americans toe the Obama hardline.

This kind of madness on the part of President Obama is nothing new. As early as April 11, 2009, LaRouche had warned an international webcast audience about Obama’s severe narcissism, and several months later, called for the invoking of the 25th Amendment to remove him from office before he blew up the world. Six years later, the accuracy of those warnings cannot be disputed.

What is different now, however, is that the world is on the brink of a general war and a total disintegration of the trans-Atlantic financial system. Either of these events could occur at any moment, and the only sane course of prevention is to remove Obama from office.

The New York City events over the next week pose a challenge to American and world leaders alike. So long as Obama remains in office, the danger to mankind remains.

When Putin arrives in New York City this coming weekend, prepared to make his formal offer for a truly “international coalition” to defeat the barbaric ISIS through military cooperation with the Assad government, Iran, Egypt, and others, Obama will be trapped, exposed for his actual support for the various British/Saudi- spawned terrorist organizations across Southwest Asia, through his mad drone killings and perpetual war policies against secular governments in the region.

Lyndon LaRouche warned yesterday against any misguided expectation that Obama will admit defeat and strike a deal with Putin. Obama’s character is clear, derived from his murderous father-in-law and displayed openly since his first weeks in office — he will do everything in his power to start a war. He will react violently, adamant that his imperial, narcissistic self-conception can not be refuted. Only removing Obama from his position as Commander-in-Chief can assure that the war can be avoided, and that the new paradigm posed by Putin, Xi Jinping, and the BRICS nations for the end of geopolitics and a program for global development can be achieved.

Remember Obama’s first term. Not only did he launch the criminal war on Libya, turning the nation over to conflicting terrorist organizations on the Wahhabi payroll, and arming the terrorist cells in Syria, but he proudly prepared a “kill list” every week as his murder victims, to be hit by drones anywhere in the world, without a criminal charge, without due process, including women and children — simply on the grounds that he likes to kill. Each drone attack recruited yet more terrorists to barbarism. This is not a person who will strike a deal for defeating terror, or for establishing peace.

EIR today held a press conference in New York City to release the new EIR Special Report, “‘Global Warming’ Scare Is Population Reduction, Not Science.” Copies will be made available to national representatives being drawn to the UN Sustainable Development Summit from Sept. 25-27, where the green genocidalists hope to force nations to sign agreements to sacrifice growth and development — and accept population reduction — under the lying pretense that carbon has something to do with climate change. In addition to presentations by EIR representatives, former NASA scientist Tom Wysmuller, part of the TheRightClimateStuff.org network, presented the case against the carbon hoax.

As the mobilization by EIR and LaRouchePAC around the coming United Nations General Assembly session continued today with a large New York rally, diplomats, journalists and New Yorkers were reacting — as Lyndon LaRouche put it — “You seem to be moving ahead while Wall Street is going backward.”

LaRouche called it noteworthy that a number of bankers and economists have emphasized to EIR in recent days, that what the Federal Reserve and other central banks are now doing at Wall Street’s demand, is profoundly destructive to the economy and living standards. Moreover, it signals that Wall Street financial institutions are no longer viable, and face a complete blowout.

The U.S. economy in its Wall Street-dominated form is dead. Wall Street itself, lead by Goldman Sachs, is now desperately demanding “more easing” — negative interest rates, confiscation of depositors’ savings — from the Federal Reserve and other central banks, to stave off its collapse. This is just a defensive tactic that solves nothing for Wall Street, but could make the economy far worse if not stopped.

Now is the time to shut Wall Street down: the option of a Glass-Steagall bank reorganization and FDR-modeled recovery program is ready.

At the United Nations Tuesday morning, we take on the Wall Street/City of London “green” zero-growth policy directly, in a press conference announcing the EIR Report, “Global Warming Scare Is Population Reduction, Not Science.”

We are clearly on the edge of sudden change. LaRouche’s view is that internationally, the strategic move by Russian President Putin, backed by China, for a real coalition against ISIS/al-Qaeda terrorism, is clearly succeeding. All the major United States press are freely admitting — furious though they may be about it — that Putin’s “tour de force” is overturning President Obama’s failed and disastrous policy of regime-change wars.

This, LaRouche commented, is a change in the global subject by Putin — again, backed by China — not a fortunate change for him. It is strategic, and has had a strong effect across Eurasia. The warmaker Obama is flanked; but will he be thrown out of office? If so, we can get a convergence of the United States with other major nations, on this and other decisive matters.

But the United States’ reaction to this new situation is still extremely important. To be positive, that reaction must include removing all power from Obama.

We previously reported that during Wednesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, numerous of the Senators attacked the abject failure of the U.S.’s “train and equip” program to fight the Islamic State in Syria. But it is now reported from the hearing, that some of the Committee’s members are having second thoughts about the U.S. commitment to remove President Assad from power.

A hint of this development was publicly displayed in the questioning by Sen. Jean Shaheen (D-N.H.) of Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of U.S. Central Command, and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Christine Wormuth.  Sen. Shaheen first questioned Wormuth about the recent Russian activity in Syria, and her response that she thinks Putin is worried about the stability of the Assad regime.  Shaheen elicited a concession from the Undersecretary that well, yes, “The assessment right now is that the regime is not in imminent danger of falling,” Wormuth said.

After exploring with the witnesses the possibility of Russian air defense systems threatening coalition aircraft, Shaheen asked, “… given the total failure of our ability to influence the outcome of the Syrian civil war, are we assessing whether we should take a different response with respect to Assad?  And engaging with the Syrian troops?”  Wormuth replied that the Pentagon continues to view the best solution as achieving a political transition with Assad removed, but retaining the governing structures “so [that] you don’t have a situation of chaos on the ground,” and that Russia could contribute to such a result.  Shaheen asserted that there is no incentive for Russia to do that, and was clearly unsatisfied with Wormuth’s response.

But more was being said “on the sidelines” of the hearing. Julian Pecquet yesterday posted an article on the Al-Monitor website, “Congress rethinks anti-Assad stance.”

Pequet quoted Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) telling him “I don’t know that it helps for us to keep banging the table about Assad. I think it would be better for us to be as effective as possible in fighting [is] and restoring some kind of security environment that shifts back the flow of refugees.”

Sen. Shaheen was quoted,

Pequet reported that

Lyndon LaRouche of course supported the Senators’ criticisms of Obama’s policy, but said the question is getting rid of Obama.

Wall Street is totally bankrupt, and it’s coming down very fast now. The only solutions are pre-emptive ones that start from the re-installation of Franklin Roosevelt’s Glass-Steagall law. BUT, if you don’t present the overall solution as starting from the overall concept of Franklin Roosevelt’s total, overall solution, and working down from there,— then you’ll just wind up with chaos.

On a closely related question: Not only do we have to completely wipe out Wall Street, and have the government step in. We also have to establish real valuations, as against the current, and false, money-valuations. Then, we proceed from there, through the first difficult steps of reconstruction, and onwards into a self-sustaining and self-accelerating physical-economic recovery, and into a new era for mankind.

Wall Street is about to blow sky-high. Now we have to go back, in effect, to the beginning of the Twentieth Century, before the imposition of the money system, the system which was premised first of all on the great crime of President William McKinley’s 1901 assassination. By now, we have reached the point under this money system, where there is no way whatsoever to measure true, intrinsic values. Now, Franklin Roosevelt’s entire concept, as a totality, must be brought into play to have any hope of a solution.

At the same time, Russia has taken the initiative in Syria, and is pushing through a solution to the catastrophe Obama has inflicted on that country and more generally. More and more, the whole world supports what Putin is doing there,— including many forces in the U.S. Absent this Russian initiative, Syria and Iraq would fail totally. Indeed, all of Obama’s policies can produce nothing but failure. His influence must be totally blocked; unless Obama is induced to back down, he will destroy everything. Obama is an ugly loser. Nothing must be done to encourage Obama; everything must be done to support Putin’s leadership. Obama can only be allowed, at most, to make token gestures with no effect.

Look: The major European countries have turned against Obama’s policy. Russia is leading the world against Obama’s policy. Therefore, there’s no need for Obama’s approval. When you have Europe and Russia, there’s no need for Obama’s OK; he’s almost stymied. Now, what we need is the 25th Amendment to finish off his baleful influence altogether.

A number of leading strategists from the US and Europe are pressing for the Obama Administration to work with Russia to solve the Syria crisis, now in its fourth year.

Graham Fuller, ex-CIA Middle East/North Africa official, published “The Russians are Coming!” on his blog Sept. 15, calling on the US to stop its obsession with containing Iran and Russia and accept the idea that Russia is on the ground in Syria and can play a constructive role in defeating ISIS.

After reviewing how Russia bailed out Obama in 2013 by getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons, Fuller says that

Fuller concludes: “Bottom line: Washington does not have the luxury of playing dog in the manger in ‘managing’ the Middle East, especially after two decades or more of massive and destructive policy failure on virtually all fronts.”

Carnegie Europe’s Judy Dempsey asked a number of experts whether the US should work with the Russians on Syria, and the overwhelming majority of specialists she polled said “yes.” While not every one of the think tankers asked to respond to her question were enthusiastic about a Washington-Moscow solution, with just one exception, they all concurred that Russia was in Syria, has deep ties to the Syrian government, and must be part of any viable solution.

Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasian Group, offered a pointed response:

The New York Times reported, Tuesday, that more details of the allegations that senior intelligence officers at US Central Command are “cooking the books” in the war against ISIS have been provided to the Pentagon Inspector General’s office. According to the report, intelligence analysts have provided specific documents that allegedly show alterations intended to make the war against ISIS look rosier than it really is. Unnamed officials now say that the analysts at the center of the investigation allege that their superiors within Centcom’s intelligence operation changed conclusions about a number of topics, including the readiness of Iraqi security forces and the success of the bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria, the Times reports.

“The senior intelligence officers are flipping everything on its head,” said one government intelligence analyst. The analyst said that the complaints involve the highest-ranking officials in Centcom’s intelligence unit, run by Army Maj. Gen. Steven R. Grove. The Guardian has been reporting that Grove has been in “unusual and frequent” contact with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, which the analysts see as contributing to the pressure.

The IG investigation into cooked intelligence contributed to the atmosphere of incredulity at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today, at which US Central Command chief Gen. Llod Austin III testified.

Committee chairman Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said:

Austin refused to discuss the investigation but promised the senators that “you can be assured I will take the appropriate action,” should the allegations be confirmed by the IG investigation. 

Within the next two weeks, Russian President Putin will arrive in New York with a proposal for creating a truly international coalition to crush ISIS and the other barbaric terrorist organizations spawned by the Bush-Cheney-Obama criminal wars of destruction. Russia’s military initiative is already being launched in Syria, leaving President Obama and his White House team in utter confusion, exposed by Putin’s brilliant flanking operation, which would make Gen. Douglas MacArthur proud. Some in the White House and the State Department are taking actions to build a blockade around Syria to stop Russian humanitarian and military assistance — an act which would rapidly turn all of Syria over to the barbarians funded by the Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia.

But increasingly, leading figures in the U.S. and Europe are rising to denounce the war policy, and embracing Putin’s initiative. Leading this effort in the U.S., Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, joined by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and former U.S. Senator from Alaska Mike Gravel, addressed a conference in Manhattan, mobilizing the citizens of New York and the nation and the world via the Internet— for action in these upcoming “most momentous weeks,” as the UN General Assembly convenes in New York. “We must now take this moment,” said Mr. LaRouche,

In Germany, a dramatic turn is taking place, first in Germany’s decision to open its arms to the waves of refugees driven out of northern Africa by Obama’s murderous wars and the terrorists they spawned, and today by Chancellor Angela Merkel openly declaring that “Germany and other Western European powers need to work with Russia as well as the United States to solve the crisis in Syria.”

In Russia, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov previewed the speech to be given by President Putin at the UN. In very clear terms, Lavrov said that Putin will identify, first, the danger of the West’s imperial effort to restrain the emergence of new centers of economic and political power; second, the West’s intentional cooperation with terrorists in order to “achieve some narrow geopolitical objective”; and third, the use of unilateral coercion and sanctions, outside of international law, “under the influence of the American psychology,” to force regime change against targeted nations. Lavrov added that President Putin will speak about the “crushing of the world economic space.”

This initiative creates the capacity to achieve the necessary measures to stop the war and create a new world paradigm based on the common aims of mankind—the removal of President Obama through the 25th Amendment, the shutdown of Wall Street through Glass-Steagall, and the implementation of the World Land-Bridge together with America’s natural allies now represented by the BRICS nations.

Following a phone conversation Wednesday between Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State John Kerry, Lavrov told the press that Kerry had

It was not reported whether Kerry identified who those “ISIL sponsors” might be, but the world knows well that Obama’s pals in Riyadh are the primary source, and former DIA chief Gen. Michael Flynn revealed last month that Obama had “willfully” created ISIL and other terrorist organizations himself, to do exactly as Lavrov indicated — use terrorists “in fighting against undesirable regimes.”

Other Obama-ites backed up Kerry’s “strange suggestion.” State Department spokesman John Kirby told the press briefing that Kerry had

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was blunt: “We are supposedly harming the fight against terrorism — that is complete rubbish.” 

Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the Mediterranean Refugee Crisis in a video on the Italian website Pandora TV.

Note: This rough transcript is from the video’s Italian subtitles, and has not yet been crosschecked with the original Russian.

Putin says:

Russia is demanding answers from both Bulgaria and Greece on the matter of airspace passage for its aircraft flying to Syria.

“If anyone — in this case our Greek and Bulgarian partners — has any doubts, then they, of course, should explain what the problem is,” Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told the Interfax news agency. “If we are talking about them taking some sort of restrictive or prohibitive measures on the Americans’ request, then this raises questions about their sovereign right to take decisions about planes from other countries — Russia in particular — crossing their air space,” he said.

Greece still has not officially replied to the US request to close its airspace to Russian aircraft, but that now may be a moot point. Russian aircraft flying west over the Black Sea cannot get to Greece without flying over either Bulgaria, which has closed its airspace, or Turkey. Turkey already has a history of forcing down Russian aircraft flying to or from Syria.

Russian officials are vowing that if Russian planes can’t fly through Greek and Bulgarian airspace, they’ll find some other routes. “Of course, alternative routes will be found,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, yesterday, though without specifying what those routes might be.

Ryabkov said.

The other possible route is through Iran. The Russian ambassador in Tehran, Maxim Suslov, announced, yesterday morning, that Iran has, indeed, agreed to open its airspace to Russian flights to Syria. That means that Russian aircraft would have to fly over either Iraq or Saudi Arabia and Jordan to get to Syria, however. Though Baghdad has, in the past, expressed its own policy towards Syria, the US clearly has de facto, if not official, control of much of Iraqi airspace, because of the US-led air campaign against ISIS.

Nevertheless, Russian aircraft are apparently making it to Syria, anyway. Anonymous US officials told AFP on Tuesday, that at least three Russian planes have landed at an airbase in Latakia in recent days. Two of them were the giant An-124 cargo aircraft (larger than the American C-5) and the third was reportedly a passenger aircraft. “All of this seems to be suggesting that Russia is planning to do some sort of forward air-operating hub out of this airfield,” the official said. Two US officials also told Reuters, today, that two Russian assault ships carrying a small number of naval infantry as well as additional aircraft, arrived in Syria in the past day or so.