This Week You Need To Know
Lyndon LaRouche addressed an invitation-only EIR seminar in Berlin on March 2, titled, "The Iran Crisis: The Danger of a Global Asymmetric War Must Be Stopped." Other featured speakers were Helga Zepp-LaRouche, head of Germany's Civil Rights Movement Solidarity (BüSo); former German military attaché to Baghdad Col. Jürgen Hübschen (ret.); Prof. Cliff Kiracofe from the Virginia Military Institute; Prof. Mohammed el-Sayed Selim of Egypt (via a written speech); and EIR's Michele Steinberg. There were about 100 participants, including Arab, Asian, and African representatives; former German officials; former deputies from Parliament; scientists; and LaRouche Youth Movement members.
Here is LaRouche's keynote speech (subheads have been added).
Well, in the past period there have been some changes in the United States in politics, particularly since last Summer, a year ago, Summer. The Democratic Party had no platform—I made one. It was presented at a July conference in 2004, and it made quite a hit, and quite an impact. And as a result of that, I was brought more deeply into the functioning of the Democratic Party through the campaign of John Kerry, which came out of that convention. We did a good job in that Fall, but it was too late. We should have gotten at it earlier. And the cheating by the enemy was inevitable. And sometimes, when you know that you're going to be up against a fraud machine, you have to work in taking into account that you're up against fraud, and you have to overwhelm the fraud if you're going to win the election. And they didn't go out to overwhelm the fraud, and that was a mistake.
But then, the Democratic Party fell flat on its face, when it was reported they lost the election. And so, I intervened, and again, they were willing to listen to me. So, we made a plan for turning George Bush into a lame duck. This is not the kind of bird disease we're talking about these days, but it would do for the time being.
And he is a lame duck. We turned him into a lame duck. We knew what he was going to do, that he was going to try to rob the Social Security funds of the United States, or the people. We made that the key issue, and that kept him off-balance throughout the year. By May of the year, we had a real challenge to him organized in the U.S. Senate, which consisted of practically all of the Democratic Senators, and some Republicans, who refused to go along with what Bush was doing on key issues. So, therefore, we had, in the year 2005, we had a Democratic leadership in effect—a bipartisan leadership but with Democrats as a key to it—in the U.S. Senate. That was followed, by unfortunately, a very bad beginning for this year. And there were setbacks, there were major mistakes. But, history is history, and the process is going on....
Lyndon LaRouche issued this statement, following an EIR Seminar in Berlin March 2. (See InDepth this week for "LaRouche: The Urgency of
The American System Today.")
March 3, 2006
As Helga [Zepp-LaRouche] emphasized to a meeting of young adults, during a recent day's discussion in Berlin: Despite the heroic admiration of many Berliners, still today, for the famous Berlin airlift, and, as I added, for the memory of President John F. Kennedy, there is also a presently growing hostility to the idea of the U.S.A. in Europe generally, and in Germany, in particular. I commented on that part of the discussion, that the principal source of this, is not the atrocious behavior of the U.S. Bush-Cheney government, as much as it has been the effect of that "Green decadence" of 1968 onwards, which has paralleled that of the same trends of moral decadence in the Americas as in other parts of Europe. Nonetheless, although the trends on both sides of the Atlantic are comparable, and approximately parallel patterns, there is a specifically oligarchical aspect to the way this phenomenon is experienced in Europe.
Both North American and European expressions of this moral decadence are best understood against the background of the Prometheus Bound, the middle portion of Aeschylus' Prometheus trilogy. The pattern should be traced along the following lines.
The keystone of this pathological trend on both sides of the Atlantic, is the spread of the anti-science cult of so-called "environmentalism," as this was launched by institutions such as the 1963 report on the subject of education of Dr. Alexander King's Paris OECD, as by the similar neo-malthusian schemes of the notorious Club of Rome, as by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and by the later Limits to Growth hoaxes, by the Laxenburg, Austria International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), and the related Soviet form of the same moral corruption, the Global Systems Analysis institution. These reports are notable markers among the modes of mass brainwashing which were responsible for the spread of the "Green hysteria" rampant in Germany and other parts of Europe today.
One of the consequences of this factor of moral decadence came to the fore recently, in former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's well-founded appeal for a new general election, a call which reflected the impossibility, in fact, of continuing to govern a crisis-wracked Germany under a Social-Democratic Party encumbered by a "Red-Green" alliance. The new coalition government brought into being as a coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU-SPD regime, does not solve the problem, although it provides an awkward transition to some, yet to be defined, new coalition of forces which might, hopefully, be capable of taking the kinds of unified action which the presently already desperate, and worsening prospects demand.
This is not, however, a specifically German problem; the problem is virtually global, but most clearly expressed in Europe and the Americas generally. The point of my argument here, is that the key for understanding the aspect of that global situation specific to Germany today, is to be found in an informed recollection of Aeschylus' attack on the evil represented by the Delphic Olympian Zeus of the Prometheus trilogy.
It must be recalled, that prior to Europe's Fifteenth-Century introduction of the principle of the modern commonwealth form of sovereign nation-state, all known forms of society in earlier European or other cases, were essentially oligarchical systems, systems in which the greater number of the population were held in a cattle-like state corresponding to the banning of the people's knowledge of the use of fire by the Olympian Zeus of Aeschylus' Prometheus trilogy. Although Dante Alighieri's project for revival of a literate form of specifically non-Latin, Italian language, and his De Monarchia were forerunners of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa's prescription for the sovereign nation-state, Cusa's Concordantia Catholica and his founding of modern experimental physical science in his De Docta Ignorantia, have formed the constitutional form expressed by the modern European form of sovereign republic since the establishment of the first actually functioning commonwealths, in Louis XI's France and Henry VII's England. On this account, the two referenced works of Cusa are functionally inseparable; without a generality of the practice of the benefit of generalized revolutionary progress in experimental physical science and related use of Classical standards of artistic composition and performance, the principle of citizenship in a sovereign commonwealth is not realized.
Thus, Luca Pacioli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Johannes Kepler are outstanding examples of the explicit followers of the precedent set by Cusa's De Docta Ignorantia, and Fermat, Christiaan Huyghens, and Gottfried Leibniz followers in fact.
This set of distinctions of the principle of the modern commonwealth (the modern sovereign nation-state of all of the people of that nation) is conditioned by a single, principled distinction of the human individual from all other living species. That is the principle of action termed dynamis, the principle of the discovery of any truly universal physical principle, by such ancient Greeks as the Pythagoreans, Socrates, and Plato, a term adopted under the name of dynamics by Leibniz. The expression of this principle is typified by the Pythagorean Archytas' purely geometric doubling of the cube, the discovery of the uniqueness of the construction of the Platonic solids by Theatetus and Plato, Kepler's uniquely original discovery of a universal principle of gravity, and by Pierre de Fermat's unique discovery of that principle of "quickest time" which later formed the basis for the catenary-linked definition of a principle of universal physical least action by the work of Leibniz and Jean Bernouilli.
As Albert Einstein emphasized at a time late in his life's work, the universe is finite and unbounded, a notion which I have qualified as finite and self-bounded. That means, that a true universal principle, such as Archytas' construction of the doubling of the cube, Plato's discovery of the uniqueness of the series of regular geometrical solids, Kepler's uniquely original discovery of universal gravitation, Fermat's discovery of quickest time, and Leibniz's uniquely original discovery and further development of the fundamental principle of the calculus, the universal principle of physical least action, are notions which are efficient as far as the universe could reach, a "distance" which is co-extensive with the universe. Einstein terms this condition as "unbounded." Since I, for reasons stated in other locations, have emphasized the role of creativity in determining the changing form of the knowable universe, I insist on the qualified term "self-bounded."
Ideas of this quality of universal physical principle, typify, together with comparable notions of only Classical modes of artistic composition, the essential functional distinction between man and the lower forms of life, such as the great apes. Persons who are permitted to exercise this quality of principle of discovery in their social functions within society, are thus expressing the distinction which places human beings absolutely apart from, and above the beasts.
Thus, the Olympian Zeus's banning of human beings from the discovery of the use of fire, typifies what the ancient Greeks knew from Mesopotamia as the oligarchical principle associated with not only the implicitly "flat Earth geometry" of the Mesopotamian model, but the model which ancient Sparta adopted from the Delphi cult of the Pythian Apollo, the model of ancient Rome, especially the Roman Empire, the model of the medieval system of the Venetian financier-oligarchy and its accomplice the Norman chivalry.
The oligarchical principle is known, otherwise, as the principle of law on which the distinction of the empire depends. Thus, Europe today, insofar as it accepts the notion of "independent central banking systems," representing a financier oligarchy ranking above government, is a system of oligarchies of the traditional Babylonian form. In such cases as states which submit to a higher lawful authority attributed to an "independent central banking system," the nation and its people are not sovereign, but, at best, rank as the dependent authorities, as local potentates, such as local kings, under an emperor.
This notion of emperor is a notion of crucial significance for law in general. Under the empire, only the agency filling the role of the emperor can make law. As under the Nazi Kronjurist doctrine of Carl Schmitt, which is copied by the members of the Federalist Society and its fellow-travellers in the U.S.A. today, there is no principle of law allowed apart from the will of the agency filling the position of emperor. Modern empires, such as the British Empire still today, are based on the notion of imperial law as based in the Venetian financier-oligarchical model. States which submit to an independent central banking system are not true sovereigns, but rank no higher in practice than local authorities existing by consent of the imperial authority represented by the financier-oligarchical system.
For example, the essence of the British Empire today, treats the British Queen as an empress simply in her use by the world's dominant, private financier oligarchy as a functionary like the old Doge of Venice, as an empress of the world, in an empire as extensive in the world as the system of so-called independent central banking systems constituted as Venetian-style private financier oligarchies. Thus, the 1971-1972 wrecking of the dollar-based, fixed-exchange-rate Bretton Woods System, in favor of the Venetian oligarchical form of the floating exchange-rate system was, from the standpoint of the U.S. Constitution, a treasonous act against the sovereignty of the U.S.A., rendering the U.S.A., thus, a mere king-like subject in an imperial system based on the concerted imperial power of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal outgrowths of the Venetian financier-oligarchy as defined by the partisanship of the founder of empiricism, Paolo Sarpi.
Here, precisely, lies the presently deadly predicament of Germany, typical among other nations today. Here lies the key for understanding the paradox which Helga and others reviewed in the discussion today.
The "Green" disease, which has reined in, and ruined Germany, increasingly, since 1981-82, is typical of the way in which a formerly relatively sovereign nation is reduced to virtual lackey status, by systematic suppression of the use of those creative-mental powers expressed by the combination of banning investment in scientific progress, just as the Olympian Zeus banned knowledge of the use of fire from the mortal subjects reigned over by the imperial sons of the legendary concubine Olympia. For example: this is the crucial issue which has motivated all of my bitter adversaries among leading financier and related political circles.
Modern European civilization, which was born during the course of the Fifteenth-Century European Renaissance, established the principle on which the modern sovereign form of European nation-state depends absolutely. This is the principle expressed by Nicholas of Cusa's referenced works, and by the rise of modern physical science and the revolutionary revival of the tradition of the Greek Classical principle in Classical artistic composition. The distinction of these notions of the role of the individual through science and Classical artistic composition, is that the one, physical science, depends upon the practice of discovery of a physical principle of the physical universe as the sovereign action of an individual human mind, whereas Classical artistic composition applies the same individual creative powers to the ordering of practice of social relations among a body of several or more persons. The application of conductor Furtwaengler's principle of "performing between the notes" to a strict observance of the principles expressed by the J.S. Bach system of well-tempered counterpoint (as for such exemplary cases as Bach's Jesu, meine Freude and Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus, typifies the richly deep challenge to the performers which Classical artistic compositions present.
Thus, those two principles, of physical science practiced from the standpoint of the Pythagorean principle of Sphaerics, as by Plato, and as expressed most aptly in a modern form by the work of Bernhard Riemann, and the mastery of Classical art through the use of Classical counterpoint of Bach et al., are the exemplary pillars of knowledge suitable for civilized human beings. The development of a process of mastery of the practice of both, is the exemplary expression of the proper foundation for all education and general social practice today. Hence, the concerns expressed by the discussion among a relevant group of young adults in that referenced discussion arranged by Helga.
Without the practice of those notions of universal principles, of the individualized practice of physical science and application of the same creative principle to an explicitly social medium of Classical artistic composition, there can be no true sovereignty of the human individual within society. These are, uniquely, those qualities of function which distinguish the human being from the beasts. On this account, the results of that or contrary habits of practice, speak for themselves.
The introduction of the explicit hostility to scientific progress in physical economy associated with the "Green," so-called "environmentalist" movements, represents a literally bestial, direct attack on the functional distinction between man and beast. This attack, when combined with the neo-imperialist fad of destruction of the nation-state institution in favor of a new world empire called "globalization," is typical of the way in which post-World War II society was attacked to the effect of producing the new form of anarcho-syndicalist movement called the "68ers," a regressive movement whose characteristic expression is the anti-science "Green movement."
It is essential to recognize that it was not the "Green movement" which created the fiercely anti-social, destructive effects of present-day "environmentalism"; it was the imperialistic financier oligarchy, which created "environmentalism" as a tool for destroying society's power to resist a return to a form of imperialism, now global, based on the medieval model of the alliance of the Norman chivalry, engaged in permanent warfare and permanent revolution, on behalf of the goals prescribed by the Venetian financier oligarchy.
Although this is a common problem on both sides of the Atlantic, the problem so posed can be more readily understood from the vantage-point of the U.S.A., than in Europe. To make the same point: It was Europe which created the U.S.A. as an integral feature of the previously frustrated efforts of the best souls of Europe, to establish a form of society consistent with true human freedom in Europe itself. As a consequence of the French Revolution of the 1789-1815 interval, with the triumph of the uneasy temporary alliance of Anglo-Dutch imperial liberalism with the relics of Habsburg rule, and the wars which Britain fostered among credulous European potencies to the greater glory of the Venetian tradition carried forward in the guise of the Anglo-Dutch-Liberal British imperium, the U.S.A. was relatively isolated and besieged until the Lincoln-led victory in the war against Lord Palmerston's Confederacy puppet. However, over the interval 1863-1876 the U.S. emerged as a continental power and the model of economy adopted by many governments, including Bismarck's Germany, in Eurasia and the Americas. In the course of two so-called "World Wars" of the Twentieth Century, the U.S. under the leadership of President Franklin Roosevelt emerged as the principal threat to the continued power over the planet by forces associated with the Anglo-Dutch Liberal version of the form of Venetian oligarchical-financial, imperial system, lately centered in the City of London.
From the moment of the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, the effort to undermine and then destroy what the U.S.A. represented was the intention of the Europe-based Anglo-Dutch Liberal financier oligarchy and its allies within the financial community of the U.S.A. itself. This was expressed in such leading forms as the founding of the infinitely morally rotten Congress for Cultural Freedom, including its destructive cultural role in targetted areas such as Paris and West Berlin. Increasingly, since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, this campaign for the triumph of imperialistic forms of cultural decadence took the form of anti-Americanism among the younger generations, especially the "68ers," in Europe.
In the effort to produce this effect within Europe itself, the spreading influence of the morally and intellectually corrosive influence of existentialism, and a correlated hatred of scientific progress in agriculture and industry, were leading expressions of forces of moral and intellectual degeneration echoing the very worst of the conditions promoted by that Peloponnesian War which has been the outstanding precedent, as a benchmark in history, for study of the rampant decadence in Europe and the Americas today.
The "Green Pest" which seems to rule where the windmills reign, seeming like a conquering force of H.G. Wells' Martian invaders, today, prompts one to think: "Where is Don Quixote now, when we have work for him to do?!!"
The political issue, when expressed in economic terms, is: whether the sovereign nation-state shall control financial processes, or whether financial powers operating as a higher authority than the national government, shall rule the nation, even the world. The so-called "free trade" system associated with Lord Shelburne's lackey Adam Smith, is a system of imperial world rule by Venice's Anglo-Dutch Liberal financier offspring. Allow "free trade," and the usurer will soon own you, and probably your Faustian soul as well.
Since the potential physical power of sovereignty lies with the people of the nation, provided the nations are sovereigns, the modern neo-Venetian imperialists could rule the world, as their scheme for early "globalization" is the form of the new world imperialism, only if the people of the nations are induced to make themselves stupid, as they have tended to do, increasingly, since the victims of the post-World War II Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) came into adulthood, and a condition beyond adultery, in the guise of the enraged "68ers." The characteristic of those "68ers" was their hateful regard for what were described as "blue-collar workers," the hatred of modern family-farm agriculture and modern scientifically progressive industry. The mass-brainwashing conducted by the existentialists of the CCF, which had been rampant in the education and other enculturation of the generation born, approximately, between 1945 and 1955, had cultivated dispositions which were given shape by the nightmares of nuclear-age "science fiction" horrors on kiddie television, and the real-life, "Armageddon Now!" horrors of the 1961-1968 rampages of the "military-industrial complex," became, in the late Spring and Summer of 1968, the new, virtually global cult of Dionysius, the worshippers of the Gaea of the Delphic cult of the Pythian Apollo. Not only did they have a form of imitations of the Sophist cults produced among Athenians by the ancient cult of Apollo, they embodied the effects of a system of conditioning, centered in the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was an intended virtual copy of the ancient Greek Sophist cult.
The most essential distinction of Sophist cults is that they deny the existence of any knowable universal principle. Like the evil, real-life Thrasymachus of Plato's Republic, they believe that whoever has the power to impose arbitrary rules on society represent the only true force of law for society. In principle, they are best fairly described as pro-Satanic on this account, the assertion that no true principle exists, that, as for the Nazis, everything is allowed, including the denial of everything that distinguishes man from the beasts.
This kind of arbitrary power is used as a tool of manipulation of the society in two ways most relevant for our consideration here. To those relegated to the under-class, such as the lower eighty percentile of household-income brackets of the U.S.A. today, all is allowed: Steal their pensions, condemn them to death and torment by denial of essential care, destroy their children by virtually impossible conditions of life, including their drugging, and crush them generally, even kill off those deemed members of superfluous sections of the population. Kill for profit; kill for pleasure; kill, torture, and so on, for no other required reason, than delight in the effect this produces. Yet, to those who are, or approximate the members of an oligarchy, tempt them by affording them a sense of participating in the exertion of the power which the authors of this evil system, the modern neo-Venetians, deploy.
Like Carl Schmitt, the real monsters do not adopt Swastikas. They are the higher aristocracy of the empire, oligarchs, who dole out rewards and encouragements to those who do officiate in managing those masses degraded to the virtual status of cattle. When the captured Nazis and their like are punished, the real Venetian controllers return to the circles of the financier oligarchies of the world, to do the same evil all over again, this time, once again, as "most respectable" creatures.
The mass of people degraded as the typical "68ers" and their present-day victims were degraded, accept the condition into which they have been thrown as "the way things are," even such degraded mental states as the deluded defenders of the "Green cause." The oppressed thus adopt the chains of their degradation as the trinkets with which they are adorned. They now admire their oligarchs, like the slaves who would defend their masters against their masters' enemies. For them, there are now no principles; there is only whatever miserable bit they are left, by their degraded circumstances, to regard as their comforts and pleasures.
That is the way in which the new surge of love for the trappings of oligarchism has arisen within a Europe of lost principles today.
[See InDepth this week for LaRouche's keynote speech to a Berlin Seminar, "LaRouche: The Urgency of the American System Today."]
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Executive Intelligence Review, Vol. 33, No. 10 To navigate the content of the entire issue, please begin by clicking anywhere on Page 1. ...Requires Adobe Reader®. |
LaRouche: The Urgency of The American System Today
Lyndon LaRouche addressed an invitation-only EIR seminar in Berlin on March 2, titled, 'The Iran Crisis: The Danger of a Global Asymmetric War Must Be Stopped.' Other featured speakers were Helga Zepp-LaRouche, head of Germany's Civil Rights Movement Solidarity (Bu¨So); former German military attache´ to Baghdad Col. Ju¨rgen Hu¨bschen (ret.); Prof. Cliff Kiracofe from the Virginia Military Institute; Prof. Mohammed el-Sayed Selim of Egypt (via a written speech); and EIR's Michele Steinberg. There were about 100 participants, including Arab, Asian, and African representatives; former German officials; former deputies from Parliament; scientists; and LaRouche Youth Movement members. Here is LaRouche's keynote speech.
Collapse of Carry Trade Would Blow Out Financial System
by L. Wolfe
A panic is setting in among key financial circles—a panic that weare fast approaching the final disintegration of the financial casino known as the global monetary system. An indication of that panic and of near-term breakout of a systemic credit crisis came in the form of an article in the Feb. 24 London Daily Telegraph titled, 'Global Credit Ocean Dries Up,' which identified as the trigger point for such financial disaster the collapse of the so-called 'carry trade'— the ability to borrow large sums of money at low interest rates in Japan, Switzerland, and similar locations, and then use them in any sector that offers higher yields on interest rates.
Where We Stand in the Battle To Save the Machine-Tool Sector
by Nancy Spannaus
Approximately one year since Lyndon LaRouche raised the alarum over the need to save the U.S. automobile industry, as the core of the nation's machine-tool capability, from extinction, the future of that sector hangs in the balance.
World's Water Wells Are Drying Up!
Australian Professor Lance Endersbee reviews the disastrous state of world groundwater, and shows why it is not replenished by rainfall, contrary to the textbook models.
Only Removing Cheney Will Avert War and Dictatorship
by Jeffrey Steinberg
On March 2, speaking before an assembly of international diplomats and others in Berlin (see Feature), Lyndon LaRouche reiterated his warning that the Bush Presidency is doomed unless George Bush dumps Vice President Dick Cheney immediately. In recent polls, Bush's own approval ratings had crashed to 34%, while Cheney's approval was barely 18% of Americans, following his recent attempts to cover up his role in the shooting incident at a Texas ranch during a quail hunt, and mounting evidence that he was the kingpin of the Valerie Plame leak conspiracy.
Israel Near Detonation: Will the Abramoff Factor Sink Bibi?
by Anton Chaitkin
Vice President Dick Cheney and his allies, seeking an immediate war with Iran or Syria, desperately want war-bent Benjamin 'Bibi' Netanyahu to win Israel's March election, to succeed the comatose Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. While acting Prime Minster, and Kadima Party candidate Ehud Olmert has been a Likud bloc fixture for decades, and is hardly a viable 'peace candidate,' he, like Sharon, would likely draw the line, and oppose a suicidal Israeli war provocation against either Syria or Iran. Only Bibi Netanyahu, among the candidates in this month's election, would flagrantly defy Israeli national interests, to pursue a George Shultz/Dick Cheneydictated agenda of regional chaos and perpetual war.
Ohio Reps Hold Hearing To Save Auto Industry
OnFeb. 16, 2006, State Rep. Catherine Barrett (D-Cincinnati) convened an extraordinary public hearing in the Ohio state capital, Columbus, to hear testimony on her pending resolution (HCR 22) to address the crisis in the automobile industry by calling for Federal intervention to save the existing domestic auto industry, and retool it for large-scale infrastructure projects.
Netanyahu Pushes Sharon's 'Jordan Is Palestine' War Plan
by Dean Andromidas
While Ariel Sharon, felled by a massive cerebral hemorrhage, lies comatose in a Jerusalem hospital, his notorious war plan, 'Jordan is Palestine,' is very much alive. Its new sponsor is Likud party chairman and agent of George Shultz, Benjamin 'Bibi' Netanyahu. For two decades, 'Jordan is Palestine' was at the center of Sharon's strategic thinking, in which a war launched against Jordan, or the collapse of the Jordanian monarchy, would provide the pretext to ethnically cleanse hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the entire Israelioccupied West Bank. The victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections is serving as the new pretext to put the policy back on the agenda.
Will London's Schemes for Mexico's Elections Be Overturned?
by Gretchen Small
With just four months to go before the Mexican Presidential elections, who should deploy into that contest but Dick Cheney's Spanish ally, anti-Islam warrior Jose´ Marý´a Aznar, the former prime minister. The Spanish people had thrown Aznar and his crusade out of office more than a year ago, but there he was in the Mexico City headquarters of the National Action Party (PAN) on Feb. 21, urging Mexicans to join Cheney's global war, and elect 'my old friend,' the PAN's Felipe Caldero´n, as President on July 2, 'for the good of this country.'
Thailand and the Philippines Hit By Synarchist Destabilizations
by Mike Billington
Two Southeast Asian nations were thrown into upheaval on Feb. 24: the Philippines, where President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo issued a declaration of a State of Emergency, and Thailand, where Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra dissolved the Parliament and called new elections for April 2, three years before the end of his term. While both situations involve mass demonstrations and efforts to bring down the government through 'people's power,' the two situations are diametrically opposite in nature, as we shall show.
Presidential Candidate Cheminade Gives France a Sense of the Future Again
by Karel Vereycken
Jacques Cheminade, president of the Solidarity and Progress party, has launched a Presidential campaign for the 2007 election, at a very critical juncture in France. 'The 'Non' Is Looking for a Name' was the title of a recent article appearing in the Paris daily Libe´ration, referring to the 55% vote in France against the proposed European Union Constitution on May 29, 2005. The title captures quite effectively the core of French politics today.
A Washington Dialogue With LaRouche on Statesmanship
Lyndon LaRouche addressed an international webcast on behalf of the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC) on Feb. 23, 2006. His opening remarks were published in EIR last week, and we continue here with the transcript of the question and answers session. His spokeswoman, Debra Hanania Freeman, chaired the event. The full webcast is archived at www.larouchepac.com.
U.S. Economic/Financial News
Eighty percent of U.S. port terminals are operated by foreign companies. Bob Waters, senior vice president of SSA Marine Terminals, America's largest terminal operator, provided an overview to National Public Radio Feb. 27, on how the outsourcing has spread: There are 15 major ports in the U.S., each of which is divided into a number of terminals, making roughly 100 terminals. SSA Marine Terminals and Maher Marine Terminals are the only two U.S. companies that operate major U.S. terminals, and they operate eight of them. Several cities and states manage another dozen. "Other than that, the rest of the terminals, which comprise 80%, are operated by foreign entities," he said.
The terminal operators, such as Dubai Ports World, provide stevedoring to shipping lines that utilize the port, to oversee the loading and unloading of ships. They also oversee moving cargo on and off trucks and rail, the scheduling of ships (like an air traffic controller), and then transport the cargo when it is taken for inspection.
New York Federal Reserve chairman Timothy Geithner warned about the dangers of credit derivatives, in a keynote speech Feb. 28 to the Global Association of Risk Professionals, in New York City, praised the non-existent benefits of "the rapid growth in instruments for risk transfer," and then focussed on derivatives, especially credit derivatives. He said, "They have not eliminated risk. They have not ended the tendency of markets to occasional periods of mania and panic. They have not eliminated the possibility of failure of a major financial intermediary. And they cannot fully insulate the broader financial system from the effects of such a failure."
Geithner continued, "The scale of the over-the-counter derivatives markets is very large ... now approaching $300 trillion." He emphasized that were one derivatives counter-party to fail, and renege on its contract, "the process of closing out those positions and replacing them could add stress to markets and possibly intensify the direct damage caused."
Credit derivatives are "written on a much smaller base of underlying debt issuance," Geithner pointed out, meaning that for each $1 in a corporation's debt, banks could write up to $10 in credit derivatives, to supposedly "insure" the debt. Geithner underscored that, "in the event of a default, [credit derivatives would] magnify ... the risk of adverse market dynamics."
The direction of Geithner's remarks is all the more significant, as he has been assigned, essentially, to be the Federal Reserve's case officer to get credit derivatives under control, on which matter he has been unsuccessfully working with the 14 leading credit derivative banks. (See this week's InDepth for an analysis of the carry trade.)
Cerberus Capital Management is now in advanced stage of negotiations to purchase a controlling 51% share of GMAC, reportedly for $11-12 billion. Cerberus, which is joined in the bid by Citigroup, is a New York-based hedge fund with $14.5 billion under management, the world's ninth-largest hedge fund. (The company name is derived from the mythical Greek three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hell).
The company is run by Stephen Feinberg, who, according to an Oct. 5, 2005 Businessweek profile, "has a penchant for secrecy." Cerberus has long-standing Bush family, and neo-con ties: Dan Quayle—Bush 41's Vice President—now chairs Cerberus Global Investments. And, according to the BusinessWeek article, "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was an investor [in Cerberus] in 2001, according to government ethics disclosures." Further, the same Businessweek article reported that Cerberus-owned "companies ... set up military-base camps in Iraq."
The Nov. 15, 2005 Israeli news service ynetnews.com reported that during that month, Cerberus-Gabriel Capital bought 9.99% of Bank Leumi, Israel's second-largest bank, which is at the center of dirty Israeli intelligence and financial networks. Cerberus announced its intention to increase its ownership to 20%. Then-Israeli Finance Minister Ehud Olmert, now Acting Prime Minister, helped craft the sale of Leumi. An additional force at Cerberus is Michael Steinhardt, leading Mega member, and sugardaddy for neo-con newspapers, who is a director of Ableco LLC, which company Businessweek identifies as "Cerberus' financing arm."
Quayle boasts in his biography that he helped bring Cerberus into Germany in 2003. Cerberus has been a locust: it bought up 4% of the apartments in Berlin when they were privatized, and bid to buy the WOBA apartments in Dresden. It also gobbled up German Mittlestand companies. Although it keeps in the shadows, Businessweek points out that Cerberus-owned companies globally have annual revenues of greater than $30 billion—more than MacDonalds or Cisco Systems—and more than 105,000 employees, more than Exxon-Mobil.
The Fitch downgrade of General Motors March 1 could be intended to accelerate GM's sale of GMAC to Cerberus and Citigroup (see next item). Were that completed, the ravenous Cerberus would control the chief financing instrument of GM cars; with that leverage, it could force further GM plants shutdowns, and layoffs of workers.
Fitch Ratings, citing its expectation that GM would face continued losses, declining liquidity, and a financially stressed supplier base, forecast that "suppliers could begin to restrict trade credit to GM." Fitch also assigned GM's senior unsecured debt a recovery rating of "RR4," meaning creditors would recover between 30%-50% in the event of bankruptcy. Fitch also threatened to cut them again, unless the auto maker does more cost-cutting and succeeds in selling a controlling stake in its financial arm, GMAC. GMAC's ratings were left unchanged at two levels below investment grade; while it lowered GM's issuer default and senior debt rating by one notch, to five levels below investment grade.
Both General Motors and Ford reported a decline in auto sales for February and forecast cuts in second-quarter production. Ford Motor Co. said March 1 that U.S. sales in February dropped 4% compared to year ago, as sales of SUVs tumbled 20% or more. Sales to corporate and government fleets, which padded January results, in February rose 11%—and accounted for a whopping 41% of Ford's sales. Ford said it would cut second-quarter production by nearly 2% (16,000 vehicles) compared to a year ago. GM reported overall sales declined by 2.5% from February 2005. Retail sales rose 1%, while fleet sales fell 11%. GM will cut 2Q production by 3.7% from a year ago. Chrysler, on the other hand, said its U.S. sales were up 4%, boosted by zero-percent financing, extending the incentive through the end of March.
Here are some of the latest developments:
* Giant auto-parts supplier Lear Corp. officially announced the idling of its Hazelwood, Mo. seat-assembly plant for March 10, resulting in the layoff of 251 employees, because Ford is shutting down production at its SUV assembly plant in Hazelwood. Lear is also cutting more than 100 workers at its SUV parts plant in Lebanon, Va., due to GM's closing of its plant in Oklahoma.
* Meanwhile, General Motors said it will lay off about 65 workers at its parts-distribution facility in Hazelwood, starting June 30, according to a lay-off notice.
* Tower Automotive could face a strike, like Delphi, after it asked a bankruptcy court judge to cancel its union contracts. Tower produces parts for every automaker.
* Delphi posted losses of $1.37 billion since its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in October, with a $121-million loss in January.
(For more on the crisis in auto, see this week's Indepth: "Where We Stand in the Battle To Save the Machine-Tool Sector," by Nancy Spannaus.)
According to the National Association of Realtors, resales of U.S. homes fell 2.8% in January, the fifth monthly decline, and the lowest rate in two years. Since January 2005, sales have plunged by 5.2%. The supply of unsold homes on the market is the highest since August 1998. According to the Commerce Department, the sales of new homes fell 5%, to the lowest level in a year.
So charged Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) at the Democratic Policy Committee Oversight Hearing on the Implementation of the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit on Feb. 27. The committee is calling for an extension until the end of the year before the enrollment period closes, to fix the red tape, glitches, and bugs that have plagued its first two months. So far, only 24% of those eligible have enrolled in a drug plan. They must do so by May 15 or face a permanent surcharge on their monthly premiums.
Some of the problems, besides the changeover snafus:
* Too many plans. In North Dakota alone, there are 41 plans offered by 17 companies to 105,000 beneficiaries. In Los Angeles County in California, there are 85 plans from which to choose.
* Too high a price. Because the Federal government is not allowed to negotiate prices with the companies, the prices for drugs are far higher than for the Veterans Administration—a windfall for the pharmaceutical companies. To control costs, benefits are not given for drug costs between $2,250 and $5,100 in personal drug spending, leaving in the lurch many chronically ill people needing several costly drugs daily.
* Many people who should be in the lowest payment group do not qualify under the new plan because of an assets test. If a widow, for instance, with no income and no insurance besides Medicare, has more than $6,000 in an account, she is pushed up into a higher payment category, which could cost her over $1,000 more per year. Of over 3.6 million applications for low-income subsidies, only 31% are eligible—51% of the excluded failed the asset test alone.
There are four bills which have been introduced by Democrats to patch up the ailing Medicare drug plan.
The Republican chairman of the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, Rep. Judy Biggert (Ill), shut down the March 1 hearing on "Evaluating Health and Safety Regulations in the American Mining Industry," after only 90 minutes. This was the first mine safety hearing in five years. After committee members were denied a second round of questions, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif) the Ranking Member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, reminded the chairman: "So far this year 21 miners have died in the United States. This is a crisis. Yet, the Republican leadership in Congress were unwilling to devote more than a mere 90 minutes to this issue of life and death."
Miller added, "Congress has a responsibility to take action to keep more people from dying in preventable mine accidents. The Republicans show a lack of concern and respect for the miners and their families by shutting down this hearing before the facts could come out."
World Economic News
For the upcoming September municipal election campaign in Berlin, the role of the Cerberus fund, as a leading owner of housing in the city, will be investigated—especially because the fund's purchase of almost 70,000 flats of the city-owned housing sector in 2004, was approved by the SPD-PDS-run "red-red" municipal administration.
The bigger part of the deal went through on May 26, 2004, when Cerberus bought 65,000 flats of the publicly-owned GWS for 2.1 billion euros, which instantly gave the Berlin administration 405 million euros, for urgent filling of holes in the budget. Several months before, 4,000 flats of the city-owned GEHAG had gone to the Cerberus.
The relatively safe revenue from the housing sector allows funds like Cerberus to get preferable conditions for loans from banks and other funds, such as for carry-trade operations that yield (or, have yielded, so far) enormous profits at excessively high interest rates in places like Iceland. Some of that profit may end up in aggressive take-over operations like the current one against GMAC in the United States, or even in those camps that Cerberus runs under the cover of perverted "real estate" projects in Iraq. It makes sense, that Don Rumsfeld has invested money in Cerberus.
On a high-profile visit to Kuala Lumpur, Iranian President Mohammed Ahmadinejad signed several development deals with Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, the New Straits Times reported March 3. The three-day visit to Malaysia, which is currently chairman of the Nonaligned Movement and the OIC, has important political as well as economic implications. Four memoranda of understanding were signed, covering cooperation in construction of infrastructure, housing, and railways (no details available), among others. Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was invited to visit Iran, where final agreements will be signed on the deals. Ahmadinejad, who made comments from Malaysia about the nuclear issue which were widely covered worldwide, also said: "I believe the might of my country and Malaysia will not be detrimental to other countries. We will serve international peace and tranquility."
Iran is also working closely with the Indonesian government. Both Malaysia and Indonesia have good relations with the U.S., and are trying to play a moderating role in the West's relations with Iran.
United States News Digest
An Israeli company's purchase of a U.S. military-related computer security company is under investigation by the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS). In early February, CFIUS began investigating the sale of Maryland-based Sourcefire, which provides computer security services to the Defense Department, to the Israeli-owned Check Point Software Technologies, after alarms were raised by U.S. agencies.
Objections to the sale of Sourcefire were raised by the Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security Departments, because Sourcefire produces software called "Snort," to prevent external monitoring or hacker-invasion of classified computers. Sourcefire, the Washington Post said March 2, "has deep roots in the National Security Agency," and its founder and Chief Technology officer, Martin Roesch, has been an NSA contractor.
Check Point, on the other hand, was built by Gil Schwed, described in Forbes magazine as an Israeli billionaire who served in the electronic intelligence arm of the Israeli Defense Forces. Another of Check Point's founders, vice chairman Marius Nacht, "earned a B.S. Cum Laude in Physics and Mathematics ... through an elite project of the Israeli Air Force...." Under the conditions of the sale, Check Point would own all of Sourcefire's patents, source-code blueprints for its software and the expertise of its employees.
Attorney General Gonzales testified about the NSA wiretapping program before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 6, but three weeks later, on Feb. 28, sent a six-page letter to Senate Judiciary chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa), seeking to "clarify" his testimony. According to Ranking Member Patrick Leahy (D-Vt), Gonzales now says that the Administration's legal analysis of the program "evolved over time," and gives a "strained explanation that his testimony was confined only to the program that the President had previously described, raising the question of whether there are other secret surveillance programs."
In a March 1 letter to Gonzales, Leahy notes that the Feb. 28 letter indicates that the Administration did not, at the outset of the surveillance program, consider it authorized by the Congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force against al-Qaeda—contrary to the Administration's arguments for the legality of the program since its existence was publicly disclosed, and contrary to Gonzales's own testimony.
This means, Leahy says, that this argument is simply an after-the-fact rationalization, not the considered analysis at the time the program was launched. After remarking that most of Gonzales's letter "is devoted to not providing answers" about the legal justifications of programs not confirmed by the President, Leahy poses a series of questions about surveillance programs other than those conducted by the NSA.
One of the clarifications offered in Gonzales's Feb. 28 letter, concerns his testimony about why the President's surveillance program doesn't provide for interception of communications in which all parties are within the United States (the program described by Bush has one party outside the U.S.), to which he testified that that particular legal analysis had not been done. Gonzales now states, "Since I was testifying only as to the legal basis of the activity confirmed by the president, I was referring only to the legal analysis set out in the January 19th paper, which addressed that activity, and therefore, of course, does not address the interception of purely domestic communications. however, I do not mean to suggest that no analysis beyond the January 19th paper had ever been conducted by the Department."
Gonzales' clarification has been widely interpreted as a tacit admission that there are more, broader domestic surveillance activities ongoing, than merely that admitted by the Administration to date.
The Senate voted 95-4 on March 1 to approve changes to the proposed extension of the Patriot Act. A day earlier, the Senate had voted 84-15 to end the filibuster attempt led by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc), who argued that the "protections" added to the Patriot Act were cosmetic at best.
Senators Feingold, Robert Byrd (D-WVa), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), and Jim Jeffords (I-Vt), voted against the proposed changes. After expressing his disappointment over the vote result, Feingold began reading the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, before leaving the chamber. On Feb. 28, Byrd had warned that even with the new privacy protections added by the Administration, "the law has given the government too much power to pry.... This new proposal would erase too many of our freedoms guaranteed to the American people.... In essence, this legislation says the Bill of Rights is no more."
It's unclear whether a decision by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) to delay the scheduled vote on the Sununu compromise until March 7, will have any impact on the legislation's final approval.
The Washington Times reported on March 1 that Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss), a "former" friend of President Bush, said he was offended by Bush's declaration that he would veto any attempts to stop the transfer of port operations to Dubai Ports World. He said Bush "threatened me before I even knew the details of what was involved, or whether I was going to vote for the bill or not." Lott said his reaction was: "Okay, Big Boy. I will vote to override your veto."
The Hartford Courant March 1 headlined "GOP Center Shying Away from Bush." Connecticut Republican Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn) led an effort by 28 GOP colleagues to urge Bush to restore money cut from block grants to impoverished areas, and the Florida GOP House delegation, normally among Bush's strongest supporters (his brother Jeb Bush is governor), is not supporting Bush on the port sale. Florida Rep. Mark Foley said, "We aren't going to be PR flacks when they need us."
Federal Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, in a 77-page ruling issued on Feb. 27, found that the Pentagon's National Security Personnel System (NSPS) fails to ensure collective bargaining rights for civilian Defense Department employees, does not provide an independent third-party review of labor relations decisions, and would leave employees without a fair process for appealing disciplinary actions. "Taken as a whole, the design of these regulations appears to rest on the mistaken premise that Congress intended flexibility to trump collective bargaining rights," Sullivan wrote, noting that the new regulations "entirely eviscerate collective bargaining." Sullivan's ruling was the result of a lawsuit filed in November by the American Federation of Government Employees and 12 other Federal employees' unions, following on the heels of a similar ruling, last August, against the Department of Homeland Security. The NSPS was the result of Pentagon demands that Congress allow it to craft its own civilian personnel system in the name of "flexibility."
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif) called for subpoena of documents on Halliburton profits in Iraq, in a nine-page letter to House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.), printed in the New York Times Feb. 27. Waxman, the Ranking Member of the committee, outlined over $250 million in cost reimbursements, profits, and bonuses that a Halliburton subsidiary has received from the Army Corps of Engineers for billings that Defense Department auditors deemed unreasonable and unsupported. Waxman said in his letter that the Defense Department "has been withholding relevant documents about its compensation determinations from the Committee for almost a year."
The payments stem from Kellogg Brown & Root's no-bid Restore Iraq Oil contract. Waxman notes that the Pentagon's own "auditors identified $263 million in excessive and unsubstantiated costs, 'highway robbery,'" said cited independent experts.
Normally, the New York Times and Waxman note, 55-75% of the challenges by Pentagon auditors are sustained. The Corps sustained only 3.8% of the flagged KBR/Halliburton costs. "The contractor is not required to perform perfectly to be entitled to reimbursement," a Corps spokesman told the Times.
Ibero-American News Digest
Barrick Gold (infamous for its ravaging of Africa) is in the middle of the latest attempt to create conflicts among the nations of South America. Barrick is moving to get operations underway at its open-pit Pascua Lama gold mine, a binational project straddling the border between Argentina and Chile. The Mining Integration Treaty approved by both nations in the late 1990s, in whose formulation Barrick had significant input, allows the multinational corporation to operate in the strategically sensitive border area.
Media outlets and other observers are already comparing the situation here with the orchestrated dispute taking place on the border of Argentina and Uruguay, involving Argentine environmental opposition to Uruguay's building of two cellulose plants. Chilean environmental groups, including local branches of Greenpeace and Oceana, are demanding the Pascua Lama project be halted, charging that cyanide used in the production process will pollute the environment and harm farmers and vineyards operating in the region. Argentine groups are also protesting, and there is talk of blockading roads that cross the border.
On Feb. 15, a regional office of Chile's state environmental agency, Corema, approved the project with some restrictions, although opponents charged that Barrick placed "undue pressure" on that agency, by promising farmers $60 million in assistance, to offset any possible environmental damage. The final decision on the project will rest in the hands of incoming President Michelle Bachelet, although Argentina's provincial government of San Juan must also approve it.
On Feb. 25, the Grupo Mexico mining company admitted that 65 miners trapped in the company's northern Pasto de Conchos coal mine since a Feb. 19 explosion had no chance of being rescued. PRI Sen. Roque Villanueva charged on Feb. 27 that the company had refused to announce the miners had died from Feb. 19 Feb. 25, in order to keep their stock from collapsing on the stock market. Grupo Mexico is no small "Mexican" company, but owns mining giants Asarco and the Southern Peru Copper Company, and is the world's third-largest copper producer, fourth-largest silver producer, and fifth-largest producer of zinc and molybdenum, as well as having gold mines.
One prime target in the national uproar which has followed the deaths, is Fox's Interior Minister, Carlos Abascal, who had been the Secretary of Labor for the first four years of the Fox government. Abascal is the loyal son of Adolf Hitler-loving Synarchist leader Salvador Abascal, for systematically ignoring the abysmal conditions in Mexico's mines.
The head of the Mining and Metalworkers Union, Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, charged that the conditions in Pasta de Conchos typify the conditions in Mexican mines generally today: The miners had recycled used equipment, lamps which wouldn't last even an hour, enough oxygen for only six hours, dysfunctional rescue equipment, etc. Of the miners killed, only 25 were union members, who had some training for the job; the rest were temporary, untrained contract labor. The weekly salary of union as well as contract labor is 700 pesos—that is, just over $66.
On Feb. 28, the union issued a statement charging the government that the government is out to change the union leadership, exposing itself as what it is: "a feudal and elitist government.... This repressive policy against national, democratic trade unionism is typical of the old synarchism, today transformed into fascism."