Category: Aggregated

Even while fools such as Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Scheuble insist that both the Italian banks and Germany’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank, are in no serious trouble, David Folkerts-Landau, the chief economist of Deutsche Bank, has expanded on his earlier warning that the entire EU banking system is on the brink of collapse. He blamed it largely on European Central Bank president Mario Draghi’s QE — buying ailing bonds without limits — and reducing interest rates into negative territory. “Europe is seriously ill,” he said in an interview with Die Welt, adding that urgent treatment was required, particularly measures that spark economic growth again, because without growth, the banking crisis cannot be overcome.

Folkers-Landau said that the living standards across Europe are severely threatened, and that this is a major reason for the rapid rise of anti-EU sentiment across Europe.

Lyndon LaRouche has intervened directly into this crisis, pointing to the actual cause of the unfolding disaster — the assassination of Deutsche Bank Chairman Alfred Herrhausen in 1989, whom LaRouche identified as the last German banker who understood the necessary role of banks in fostering credit for the real economy. Since his assassination, Deutsche Bank and German banking generally have been taken over by the British, both literally in the sense that the British now own Deutsche Bank, and in terms of shifting to speculation rather than productive investment.

See: Zepp-LaRouche: Deutsche Bank Must Be Rescued, for the Sake of World Peace!

The economies of most nations in the trans-Atlantic region are implicitly bankrupt, LaRouche said in a discussion Wednesday with his Policy Committee. But the German economy has within it the means to save the European economies, and beyond, due to the historic German dedication to investments into science and technology. If Deutsche Bank were to collapse, he warned, the result would be not only European-wide economic breakdown, but war — global war.

While a recapitalization of Deutsche Bank is therefore urgent, it must not be a matter of money per se, but a reorganization of its vast, largely worthless derivative exposure and non-performing loans and a return to productive investment, as envisioned by Herrhausen. The German economy could then provide the margin required to bring the European economy back to the creation of real profit.

The danger of war could not be more apparent than it is today. One of Putin’s top advisors, Sergey Karaganov, told Der Spiegel today that the extensive NATO deployment of forces to the Russian border, as further implemented at the Warsaw NATO Summit last week, is a military provocation, saying that “If NATO initiates an encroachment — against a nuclear power like ourselves — it will be punished.”

At the same time, China’s Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai Tuesday responded to the multiple military threats to China since Obama’s “pivot to Asia” and the U.S. intervention against China’s sovereignty in the South China Sea, saying: “Sending these carriers and bombers is a manifestation of the law ‘might makes right’. Therefore China has to oppose and reject it. This is in the true spirit of international law. And if it happens to us, it could happen to anyone.”

There are no partial measures to deal with the existential economic and strategic crisis now confronting mankind. There must be a creative solution based on new principles, resting on the understanding that every human being has the creative potential to contribute to the common aims of mankind. An end to geopolitics, to the beastial philosophy of “one against all,” between individuals and between nations, is urgent, possible and necessary.

Tuesday’s edition of the London Guardian writes that the new report issued by the U.S. House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) on July 11 said that direct British government interventions prevented HSBC from being charged with money-laundering by the Obama administration in 2012. The report said the British government “played a significant role in ultimately persuading the DOJ not to prosecute HSBC.” Instead of pursuing a prosecution for crimes including terrorist aid and drug money laundering, the bank agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion fine.

The HFSC report charges that British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne (who holds the same post to this day) and a British banking regulator warned of “global financial disaster” if HSBC were prosecuted.

The report published letters and emails from Osborne and Financial Services Authority (FSA) officials to their U.S. counterparts, warning that launching criminal action against HSBC in 2012 could have sparked a “financial calamity.” Osborne wrote to Ben Bernanke, who was then the Federal Reserve Chairman, and Timothy Geithner, then Treasury Secretary, to warn that prosecuting a “systemically important financial institution” like HSBC “could lead to [financial] contagion” and pose “very serious implications for financial and economic stability, particularly in Europe and Asia.”

The report charged that the FSA was “problematic,” “weighed in very strongly,” and caused a “firestorm,” which led then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to overrule the advice of his own prosecutors and not pursue criminal action.

“FSA has been on the phone for the criminal discussions,” officials wrote in emails released in the House report. “That’s what has caused the latest firestorm. The contents of that discussion are included in the Chancellor’s letter.”

The FSA was so desperate about the possibility of HSBC losing its charter to operate in the United States, that the FSA repeatedly warned that even the threat of possible charter withdrawal could have caused a fresh global financial crisis. Furthermore, the report said Holder “misled” Congress about the Justice Department’s reasoning for declining to prosecute. It said the Department did have enough evidence to pursue criminal charges against HSBC, despite Holder’s claim to the contrary, and pointed out that the bank had already admitted to the U.S. government that it had broken money-laundering rules.

The report said: “Rather than lacking adequate evidence to prove HSBC’s criminal conduct, internal Treasury documents show that DOJ leadership declined to pursue [its legal team’s] recommendation to prosecute HSBC because senior DOJ leaders were concerned that prosecuting the bank `could result in a global financial disaster’— as the FSA repeatedly warned.”

This is a dramatic, “smoking gun” confirmation of Lyndon LaRouche’s repeated insistence that the Obama administration’s policies, including salvaging the criminal banking system, are dictated by the British Empire.

As we approach the 15th anniversary of September 11, 2001, our nation, far from having recovered from that day of infamy, is now more violent, more terrorized, more impoverished and more despairing than ever before. That the truth about what happened on that day, when close to three thousand Americans perished, has not been told to the American people, and that justice has not been done, is a primary cause of the devastation our nation and much of the world are currently experiencing.

Fifteen years ago, four planes were hijacked, from Boston, Newark, and Dulles Airport in Virginia. In each case, all the passengers crashed to their fiery deaths. 265 people died on the planes, 125 people were killed at the Pentagon, and 2606 died in the World Trade Center.

This death count does not include the several thousand Americans killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other locations in the so-called “war on terror,” nor does it include the hundreds of first responders who have died since 9-11 due to illness caused by the debris which they inhaled as they tried to rescue people and clean up the damage. It also does not include soldier suicides which are now at close to 25 per day in the United States.

This death count does not include the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Afghanis, Somalis, Libyans, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Syrians and others who have died in these wars or as “collateral damage” from drone strikes.

Not only have hundreds of thousands of lives been lost in these wars, but the number of deadly terror attacks has been increasing, not decreasing. From Paris, to Brussels, to Baghdad, to San Bernardino, to Orlando, and now to Dallas, mass killings are shattering the order of human affairs.

In Britain, the Chilcot Inquiry of former Prime Minister Tony Blair has concluded that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was NOT a war of last resort, but, by implication, a war of aggression. As the London Guardian put it, “Tony Blair is damned.” Parents and family members of the 179 British soldiers killed in Iraq are now filing suit against him for the deaths of their loved ones in an unnecessary war.

What about Presidents Bush and Obama, as well as former Vice President Cheney, who pursued this war and other wars at the cost of thousands of American lives and the safety of us all?

Remember, although 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, the Bush Administration and the Saudi Government waged a massive public relations campaign to place the blame elsewhere, first by placing the blame almost entirely on the bin Laden network, and then focusing on an alleged threat from Iraq, implementing a policy that has plunged the United States into a state of perpetual war for over a decade.

We the undersigned believe that the world has paid too a high price for the cover-up of the events of 9-11. We demand justice for all those who died on September 11th, 2001 and its aftermath. We demand the following:

1. The immediate public disclosure of the 28 pages (the final chapter of the Congressional report by the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001), which can help to reveal the Anglo-Saudi apparatus which supported the 9-11 hijackers as they trained and prepared for their attack on the United States.

2. Public disclosure of the “Al Yamamah” weapons for petroleum deal negotiated by then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Saudi Prince Bandar which created the sufficient off-the-books finances needed for the 9-11 attacks.

3. A thorough investigation (including the FBI’s release of thousands of pages they have been withholding) of areas which hosted these hijackers, including, but not limited to, Falls Church, VA; Sarasota, FL; San Diego, CA; and Paterson, NJ.

4. A “Chilcot Inquiry” investigation of both the Bush and Obama administrations to determine their complicity in the cover-up and protection of the 9-11 terror apparatus, as well as whether they, like Tony Blair engaged in “aggressive war,” in violation of International law.

5. United States collaboration with Russia to eradicate terrorist networks in the Middle East and Northern Africa, as well as a reconstruction of the region so that the millions of displaced people may return safely to their homes.

Let us honor those who have died as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks, by dedicating ourselves to creating a world where this never happens again.

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