Author: Spencer

Syrian ground forces, in coordination with the Russian air contingent based in Latakia, have launched an offensive against Islamist militant groups in Aleppo, Latakia, and Hama provinces.  News reports indicate that the offensive began Wednesday, following the cruise missile strikes launched from Russian ships in the Caspian Sea.  The Chief of Staff of the Syrian Army, Gen. Ali Abdullah Ayoub, went on Syrian TV yesterday to report that the army has “taken the reins of military operations,” to form the 4th Assault Corps, in the aftermath of Syrian and Russian air strikes that have killed hundreds of terrorists in the three aforementioned provinces.  According to the official SANA news agency, Ayoub announced that the Syrian armed forces started a large-scale assault today, aimed at uprooting the gatherings of terrorists and expelling them from the areas and towns which have been suffering the woes and crimes of terrorism.

According to the Wall Street Journal, citing a rebel commander in the area, the Syrian ground assault began at daybreak yesterday, on multiple fronts, with airstrikes and a barrage of rocket and artillery fire.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported today that its jets in Syria had hit 27 targets in 22 sorties overnight.  “The [russian] bombers targeted eight militant strongholds in the province of Homs.  The militants’ fortifications were completely destroyed by the strikes,” said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov. 

While the Obama Administration and its co-thinkers in the think-tank world in Washington squawk and complain about the Russian military offensive in Syria, it, in fact, is revealing serious Russian military capabilities that were previously little understood, if known at all.  Daniel Fielding, staff writer for Russia Insider, makes the point succinctly in an article published yesterday.  He writes that the missile strikes confirm two things: “(1) that the Russians again have demonstrated a capability that previously only the US had demonstrated; and
(2) that the coalition they have created with Syria, Iran, and Iraq is a fully operating reality, that is able to confer and agree on missile strikes.”

The critics complain that Russia could easily have hit the same targets using the aircraft that it has flying out of Latakia, but Fielding writes that “supplementing the aircraft strike force with long-range missiles greatly increases tactical flexibility, enabling a greater number of targets to be attacked.”  That is, the missiles are appropriate weapons for going after large, fixed targets, freeing the aircraft to go after more mobile targets such as trucks or artillery.  “Subsonic cruise missiles are exceptionally difficult to observe and track — and shoot down — so the element of surprise is increased. The Islamic State now knows it can be attacked anywhere and at any time — day or night — without warning.”

As for why from the Caspian Sea rather than the Mediterranean Sea, where the Russian Navy is maintaining a strong task force, Fielding writes, “The US has very powerful fleet and intelligence assets in the Mediterranean — as do US allies such as Israel.  Launching their missiles from the Caspian Sea enables the Russians to do so without outside observation or interference.”

In Moscow, Col.-Gen. Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Main Operations Directorate of the Russian General Staff, confirmed that the missile strike had been coordinated with both Tehran and Baghdad, as the missiles had to fly several hundred kilometers through those two countries’ air space to get to their targets in Syria.  He stressed that all the targets had been properly analyzed using the data received from space and radio reconnaissance, communications interception, and photos made by UAVs.  Data collected by intelligence of Syria, Iran, and Iraq, including human intelligence, was also used, and all of the targets were verified, according to a press release posted by the Russian Defense Ministry. 

Officials at the Pentagon and the State Department, reflecting the views of the President himself, made clear yesterday that the Obama Administration will not share intelligence with the Russians on ISIS, or cooperate with Russia against ISIS in any other way.

“I don’t know how you share intelligence when you don’t share a common objective,” said State Deaprtment spokesman John Kirby.  The “common objective” that the Russians don’t share is the overthrow of Syria’s legitimately-elected President Bashar al Assad.

“If there are some forces that also have weapons in their hands and are on the ground fighting, as the coalition says, with the Islamic State, and they should not be touched, then wonderful,” said Maria Zakharova, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman.  “Give the list, give the call signs of these people, tell us where are they located, explain why they shouldn’t be touched.  Indeed, this information is not provided.”

The US response to the Russian offer is, in effect, “not on your life.” Unnamed US officials told the New York Times that the last thing they were going to do was provide coordinates for where American-backed opposition groups were, lest they be bombed by the Russians as part of Moscow’s alleged “effort to back Assad.”

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, while in Italy yesterday, went so far as to describe Russia’s strategy as “tragically flawed,” and claim that, therefore, the US could not cooperate with the Russian campaign. Carter said:

“We believe that Russia has the wrong strategy. They continue to hit targets that are not ISIL.  We believe this is a fundamental mistake…We are not prepared to cooperate in a strategy which is tragically flawed, and that is why I said the United States is not collaborating with Russia.”

“The US Air Force and other parties have been conducting airstrikes for a year.  We have reasons to believe that they don’t often hit terrorist targets, or rather do so very rarely,” Igor Konashenkov, the spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, told RT.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said:

Ryabkov said that Russia would do quite well without US intelligence, since it has plenty of other sources.  “There are our own means of reconnaissance.  We get intelligence from a number of other countries and coordinate its flow through the Baghdad information-sharing center,” he said.

Rostislav Ishchenko, a Ukrainian strategic analyst now in Moscow, wrote a warning in the Russian publication MIA Rossiya Segodnya, that the recent diplomatic breakthroughs by Russian President Putin could drive Obama to new provocations against Russia. Ishchenko cited three recent diplomatic coups by Putin: His United Nations General Assembly speech, his flanking operation in Syria, and his Normandy-format summit meetings, where he obtained German and French support for the Minsk accords.

Ishchenko wrote that

The author went on to highlight four flashpoints, outside eastern Ukraine, that could be detonated by Obama against Russia, starting with the situations in Moldova and Transdniestria, where there is a threat of a Maidan revolt and where Right Sector is threatening a blockade of supplies in to the Russian peacekeepers in Transdniestria. “All the US has to do is unleash the Moldovan and Ukrainian radicals, and there will be a new conflict zone, not covered by the Minsk accords, into which Russia will be inexorably pulled…

Moscow would likely organize an air bridge to Transdniestria, while setting the stage for Ukraine to try and close its airspace, shoot down Russian planes, etc.”

In the Caucasus region, Ishchenko warned about a revival of the Karabakh conflict, the implications of hundreds of Chechen fighters with ISIS, and the possibility of instability in Armenia, where there are already protests over electricity.

Central Asia is another flashpoint, since the Taliban moved to control areas of Afghanistan bordering on Tajikistan, where Russia has military contingents. Similar threats are directed against Kazakhstan, from jihadists passing through Afghanistan into Central Asia.

Ishchenko also cited Oct. 11 elections in Belarus, which could be a trigger for another attempted color revolution, despite President Lukashenko’s apparent strong position.

The article concluded with a warning:

Russia and Syria have launched an air, land, and sea offensive against jihadist groupings in the last 24 hours. Syrian ground forces, backed up by Russian air cover, have launched operations to retake territory in the Hama and Idlib provinces that have been in rebel hands for months. Even the New York Times yesterday acknowledged that the current offensive has been in the planning for the past four to six months, involving Russian, Syrian, Iranian, and Hezbollah strategists.

On Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Shoigu met with President Putin to give a status report. Much of the meeting was televised. Shoigu reported to Putin that four Russian ships from the Caspian Sea fleet had launched 26 cruise missile strikes against Islamic State targets in northern Syria. The cruise missiles were launched from the middle of the Caspian Sea and traveled 900 miles to their targets—over Iranian and Iraqi air space.

Shoigu told reporters that “intensive work of different intelligence services over the last two days has made it possible to detect a large number of various IS facilities—command posts, ammunition depots, military equipment depots, training camps of militants.” He reported that 12 ISIS targets had been hit since Sept. 30 when the offensive began. In the meeting, Putin instructed Shoigu to seek cooperation from the United States, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

Russia received a written proposal from the Pentagon for deconfliction. Russian MOD spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the Russian government “swiftly considered US proposals to coordinate actions to fight the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria. These proposals can be accepted for implementation in general. We just need to specify some technical details that will be discussed today by representatives of the Russian Defense Ministry and the Pentagon at the expert level.”

Russia has responded to accusations of targeting non-ISIS groups, with a proposal, that any countries who know about specific rebel groups who are fighting against ISIS should share the information with Russia so that the anti-ISIS operations can be upgraded.

In reality, Russian operations have targeted ISIS and also the Army of Conquest, the Saudi-created and Saudi-funded jihadist rebel faction that is dominated by the Nusra Front—the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate. Army of Conquest has targeted the Alawite enclave on the northern Mediterranean coast, and the Russian deployments into the Latakia area have countered that push.

Russia continues to deploy advanced military equipment into Syria. Col. Patrick Lang (USA-ret.) reported on his widely read website on Tuesday that Russia has placed a state-of-the-art jamming system at the airbase south of Latakia, and has, in effect, denied non-Russian fighter planes access to the area.

On Monday and Wednesday, the Turkish government issued statements countering the claims that Turkey is in a sharp conflict with Russia over the Russian deployments into Syria. Acting Prime Minister (pending upcoming new elections) Ahmet Davutoglu confirmed that Russian-Turkish relations are friendly and neighborly, and that there is now a military-to-military commission to deal with deconfliction issues between the two nations. He made clear that the Syria situation will not create a crisis in Turkish-Russian relations.

In another sign of the shifting situation since the Russian bombing campaign began in Syria, Iraqi officials made clear that they want Russia involved in the fight against the Islamic State inside Iraq. Hakim al-Zamili, chairman of the Iraqi parliament defense committee, was quoted in Russia Today:

Iraq’s Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi told France 24 on Tuesday that his government would welcome Russian warplanes in Iraq.

As you read this report, a strong delegation of LaRouche PAC organizers from New York City—seasoned veterans of Lyndon LaRouche’s “Manhattan Project”—has arrived in Washington, D.C. to head up a day of organizing and lobbying on Capitol Hill on Oct. 7, to urge key responsible Congressmen and Senators to act at once to shut down Wall Street, and implement Glass-Steagall. As LPAC’s 7-point statement, “For Urgent Attention of Congressmen, Senators and Other Members of the U.S. Government” specifies: “There is now an acute emergency which threatens to kill millions of Americans, primarily, and also citizens of other countries,” which requires action now, this week.

Panic among Wall Street and City of London bankers is evident just barely below the surface. The lead article in the Oct. 3-9 edition of the Economist, the banner publication for City of London financial interests, warns that “the system is cracking,” and calls for a massive effort to backstop the bubble with new waves of quantitative easing—exactly as Lyndon LaRouche has warned is their intention. Similarly, Forbes magazine frets that “there are over $600 trillion in OTC [over-the-counter] derivatives outstanding” on the books of the mega-banks (although the real number is probably twice that amount), which could blow the entire system apart, once a run begins. “For the likes of JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, these issues remain a topic of life or death.”

The British Empire is also panicked because their errand-boy Barack Obama is sinking, and sinking fast, both inside the United States and internationally. The impact of the United Nations General Assembly, and Russian President Putin’s bold actions in Syria, are rumbling around the planet, and people are waking up to the fact that a new international order is possible. They have watched as Putin took Obama to the cleaners in Syria, and not only survived to tell the story, but is going strong, while Obama is flailing about in frustration. The idea that “maybe we don’t have to suffer Obama any more; maybe we don’t need to submit to Wall Street and watch our nations die,” is a growing force across the planet.

This is a historic moment pregnant with potential, Helga Zepp-LaRouche has emphasized. It is a moment when we can not only sink Wall Street and reinstate Glass-Steagall, but also shift radically towards the policies of the World Land-Bridge and global reconstruction. The fact that leading scholars, think- tankers, and others in China have publicly endorsed the LaRouches’ Land-Bridge policy, that the second largest economy in the world has essentially adopted that policy, is of dramatic import globally. Now that the Chinese-language edition of EIR’s book “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge” has been published with such powerful endorsements, we will bring that message back home to the United States, with a large-run publication of the Special Report, priced for broad circulation across the country.

Lyndon LaRouche stated what is at stake, in his Oct. 5 weekly webcast with the LPAC Policy Committee:

At the UN Security Council meeting September 30th, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov began circulating a new draft resolution, derived from its previous UNSC resolutions on combatting terrorism—which the United States had rejected.

Lavrov emphasized that the Syria crisis can be solved through coordinated actions against ISIL, by supporting the work of Ban Ki-moon’s special UN envoy Staffan de Mistura, and by efforts involving other nations, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Jordan, Qatar, China, and the United States. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told the Security Council that the U.S.-led coalition had failed to contain ISIL, and that its actions in Syria violated international law, since it encroaches on Syrian territory without the government’s authorization, Newsday reported yesterday.

During the special session, Lavrov warned that the Islamic State possesses components for weapons of mass destruction, and called for ISIS to be included as a separate subject in anti- terrorist sanctions lists of the UN.

he said, according to RT. The situation in the region has worsened in the past year, Lavrov underscored, adding that “The accumulation of crisis potential came close to the point where we can talk about the destruction of the political map of the region.”

The Russian leader told the special session,

According to a copy of the draft obtained by Associated Press, it calls for states to “coordinate their activities with the consent of the states in the territories on which such activities are conducted.”  Referencing the refugee flows into Europe, Lavrov said the crisis won’t be solved without creating “a firm barrier to the aspirations of Islamic State to place the region under medieval dictate.  It is not refugees that must be stopped, but terrorists and wars and conflicts begetting them.” 

In a Sept. 30 interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), a veteran of the Afghanistan war, firmly stated that it were best for “cool heads” to prevail, in looking at the Russian intervention in Syria. The United States, she said, should work with Russia, and keep its “strategic goal” clearly in mind. The enemy is ISIL, Jabat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda. The U.S. shouldn’t get distracted by talking about “regime change or nation-building.” Overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad would not only be a mistake, she said, but would harm U.S. national security interests.

When Blitzer attempted to refute Gabbard by repeating the laundry list of Assad’s alleged crimes, and “slaughter of his own people,” Gabbard retorted that much of what is said about al-Assad today, was also said about Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi, who were overthrown by the U.S. Look at the state of those nations today, she told Blitzer, who could only mumble, “you’ve got a point.” The U.S. has to learn the lessons of the past, Gabbard underscored, and not go blindly rushing in to effect regime change, without asking “what comes next?”

In the second part of the interview, Gabbard pointed to the U.S.’s alliance with Soviet leader Stalin during the Second World War, to achieve their common objective, the defeat of Hitler and Nazism. The U.S. had to put aside objections it had to Stalin’s domestic policy, to ensure success in defeating fascism, she added. Otherwise, “we’d be living in a very different world today.” She reiterated that the U.S. must learn from history, not only from the World War II example, but also from more recent history “when we got into the regime-change and nation-building business,” which only produced chaos in its wake.

In a tweet put out yesterday, Gabbard wrote, “bad enough that the U.S. hasn’t been bombing al-Qaeda/al Nusra in Syria, but it’s mind-boggling that we protest Russia’s bombing of those terrorists…. Al Qaeda bombed us on 9/11, and must be defeated. Obama won’t bomb them in Syria. Putin did.” 

Lavrov and Kerry, who held their fourth meeting Thursday on the sidelines of the UN, must keep up the momentum through continuous contact, Lyndon LaRouche said today.  There is a process now underway, and it must be abetted through their continuous dialogue and work.  Opinion-makers must maintain continuing focus on US-Russian cooperation, while Obama must be kept out of the picture as much as possible.  Keep the Russia-US cooperation going, and block Obama from taking indirect actions against it.  Obama is still doing his dirty work, even if he is now forced to do it from behind the scenes; look carefully at what Obama is doing indirectly.  He’s hidden himself from view, but he’s continuing to operate as if under a cloak.  Obama is struck down, but he is not yet finished.  Don’t take the pressure off Obama for one moment. Increase the pressure on Obama.

        While the focus on US-Russian cooperation is important, there must be urgent attention to the vulnerability gap on the economy.  Ever since the death of Franklin Roosevelt, there has been a prohibition against any increase in US productivity.  This is still a deadly threat.  The lid was put on especially after Reagan was shot on March 30, 1981, 69 days into his Presidency. Thereafter, George H.W. Bush as Vice President, and then President, accelerated the slide.  But there was already deep corruption in the early 1970s, as reflected in the reaction to Lyn’s defeat of Abba Lerner in the famous December 1971 Queens College debate.  Afterwards, Sidney Hook delivered the threat against LaRouche.  He not only said that “You won, but we’ll never let you have a public hearing again.”  He said that they would strike back, and they did.  LaRouche was never forgiven for what he’d done.  Everyone must understand the implications of this from 1971 to the present.

        We must launch a general campaign right away, with the highest priority, making the shutting down of Wall Street an integral part of everything we do.  Obama has been struck down,— don’t take the pressure off him.  We have to close down Wall Street, or we’ll have a disaster for the US and other nations. An aggressive approach must be taken.  Wall Street is dead, and it must be buried, because the stench is overpowering.

        FDR had an eye for the problem, but the situation today is far, far beyond anything he faced in the 1930s.  Wall Street must be shut down to launch an effective US physical-economic recovery.

U.S. District Court Judge George Daniels dismissed claims against Saudi Arabia as a sovereign state in a lawsuit brought by the families of victims of the 9/11 attacks, Reuters and AP reported yesterday. However, Judge Daniels let the families’ claims against Saudi individuals named as defendants stand. Sean Carter, one of the families’ lawyers, said plaintiffs would appeal the ruling.

Judge Daniels ruled that the plaintiffs did not provide sufficient evidence to override Saudi Arabia’s claim of sovereign immunity. He ruled that the plaintiffs’ evidence would have to prove that Saudi Arabia or its officials actively supported the 9/11 attack.

The plaintiffs’ brief argued that even U.S. government officials who served on bodies that investigated 9/11 believe Saudi Arabia’s role needs more investigation. The plaintiffs obtained affidavits from former Navy Secretary John Lehman and former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey, both of whom served on the 9/11 Commission, which assert that the 9/11 Commission did not exonerate Saudi Arabia, and that its report expressly left room for further investigation of the Saudi government’s possible ties to the attackers. In addition, Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired a congressional investigation of the attacks, said in an affidavit for the plaintiffs that, in his view, two Saudi officials in the U.S. at the time of the attacks lent support to the attackers.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Carter said that “evidence central to these claims continues to be treated as classified, putting the plaintiffs at a great disadvantage… The government’s decision to continue to classify that material certainly factored into this outcome.”

Judge Daniels also dismissed new evidence from Zacarias Moussaoui, known as the “20th hijacker,” who claimed that a Saudi prince financially supported him while he was in flight school, and also gave large amounts of money to some of the attackers. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia was previously dismissed as a defendant in the 9/11 families litigation in 2005, but the judgment was vacated in 2013 after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals partly overturned its precedent on the tort exception to foreign sovereign immunity.

The ruling by the Judge removing the government of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi High Commission on Bosnia-Herzegovina from the suit explicitly benefits King Salman, who was not only the head of the High Commission when it provided an estimated $125 million to Al Qaeda during the late 1990s.  He has deepened the links between the House of Saud and the Wahhabi clergy since becoming King. 

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) attacked Obama’s Syria policy of toppling Assad and supporting ISIL by refusing to work with Syrian President Assad, in the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee’s hearing on terrorism yesterday.

Rep. Rohrabacher also chairs of one of the subcommittees of House Foreign Affairs, and is thus entitled to make remarks at the beginning of the hearing as well as later. He began:

Rohrabacher spoke later, when each Committee member asked five minutes of questions to witnesses:

Mr.Jocelyn: “A New Syrian Force (NSF) Commander… may or may not, have defected to al Nusra, which is Al Qaeda, and certainly  he provided to al Nusra Front, which is Al Qaeda, equipment.”

Rohrabacher:

Jocelyn: “There is no evidence they financed ISIL… “

Rohrabacher: “…they financed other extremist groups that later became ISIL.”

In an interview with CNN that aired over the last two days, Secretary of State John Kerry made clear that the U.S. and the U.S.-led coalition has changed its policy and is no longer demanding the immediate ouster of Bashar Assad from power.  Kerry acknowledged that the original statements, “way back when,” by the Obama Administration, had called for Assad’s removal as a first step.  That is no longer the policy, and now, the U.S. has concluded that it is necessary to negotiate a transition over time, to avoid “a vacuum or an implosion” as happened in Iraq after the U.S. invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

“We need to have an orderly transition, a managed transition, so that you don’t have a fear for retribution, loss of life, revenge,” Kerry said, urging a leadership change over a “reasonable period of time.”

Kerry made clear in the CNN interview that he sees the Russian engagement in Syria as an “opportunity” so long as the Russians recognize that Sunni forces in the region must have a stake in the transition.

On Tuesday, in an interview with MSNBC, Kerry made clear that he envisions a future Syria that is unified and secular. Referring to the U.S.-Russian efforts to reach a political transition in Syria, Kerry said, “So surely in those very fundamental principles in which we could agree, we should be able to find common ground.”

In a profile of Kerry’s diplomatic efforts on Syria, the New York Times noted yesterday that Kerry kept up a constant dialogue with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, even when President Obama had totally shut off all communications channels to Russian President Putin.  Often, the Times reported, Kerry would speak to Lavrov for hours at a time, sometimes several times a day.

U.S. intelligence sources noted this week that the face-to- face meeting between Putin and Obama on Monday in New York was the fruit of the persistent Kerry-Lavrov efforts, which took on a new importance after Kerry’s visit to Sochi in the spring to meet Putin and Lavrov.  In June Putin placed a call to President Obama, which further opened the prospects and led directly to the New York talks and the diplomatic and military channels that have now been reopened.

Lyndon LaRouche warned colleagues yesterday that the entire trans-Atlantic financial system is on the edge of total collapse, and Wall Street must be shut down, through orderly actions on the model of President Franklin Roosevelt’s take-down of Wall Street. “If Wall Street collapses in a debt panic, that chaotic destructive force can lead to death and destruction, in the United States and around the world.  The Wall Street system has to be replaced—before it kills you,” LaRouche declared.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent actions in Syria have created the opportunity for such emergency actions.  Obama is being washed out, although the process is not yet complete. Even here in the United States, sane forces are aligning with Putin, as against Obama.  Putin’s actions are having a positive effect.  The Saudis are in deep trouble, as reflected in the letter from a senior Saudi prince, circulating within the Royal Family, challenging the succession and the failed policies of the ailing King Salman and his reckless son, the deputy crown prince Mohammed bin-Salman.  Significant adjustments in the global strategic situation are taking place.

Under these circumstances, the narcissist-in-chief, Barack Obama, can be expected to take desperate, evil measures, even in spite of his greatly weakened position.  Obama’s removal remains a leading priority, and the opportunity is now greater than ever for his ouster.  Should Obama make any move to push for war or attempt any other provocative actions, he must be immediately removed under the terms of the 25th Amendment.  This must be prominently on the table, as a constant sword hanging over Obama’s head.

The fall of Speaker of the House John Boehner is itself both a clear reminder of how quickly Obama could also be out, just as it also points to the disintegration of Congress as an efficient instrument of our Federal Constitutional System.  The institution of the presidency is in need of urgent change, starting with Obama’s removal.

Wall Street must be shut down using the Glass-Steagall and related measures that were successfully employed by FDR.  Putin’s actions in Syria have created the opportunity for those emergency measures to be adopted before the Wall Street crash and the ensuing chaos.  Obama is weak, he is on the ropes, but there must now be effective actions to fully exploit the opportunity that has been created.  Wall Street is a dead stinking corpse, and the stench alone can kill you.  Shut it down now.