This Week You Need To Know

On the Press Hoax Against the Pope:
BRITAIN'S BERNARD LEWIS & HIS CRIMES
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Sept. 17 (EIRNS)—Let the faithful of Islam hear my warning words, before it is too late for us to prevent a terrible consequence for all humanity!

The founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ, was born during the reign of the evil Roman Emperor Augustus, and was murdered, through crucifixion, by the order of the Pontius Pilate who was the personal agent of the frankly satanic Emperor Tiberius, who was resident, with his retinue of Mithra-cultists, at his headquarters at the truly capriolic Isle of Capri. The chronicle of these events was supplied by the four accounts of the Christian Apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; a deeper insight into the chronicled events was supplied by the Apostle John. The deeper understanding of the Christian mission, as I share presently relevant elements of this knowledge, was supplied, to the present day, by the Testament and Letters of the Apostle John and the Letters of the Apostle Paul.

The writings of the Apostles John and Paul represent the Classical Greek science which was the highest form of scientific and related knowledge of that time, in opposition to the pro-Satanic legacy of the worship of the Olympian Zeus and other pro-reductionist excretions of that wicked Pythian cult of the Delphi Apollo from which the evil of imperial Rome had sprung in that time.

So, the Apostles Peter and Paul, among legions of other Apostles and ordinary Christians, were murdered in their martyrdom by a Roman Empire which has been intrinsically evil from the time of its conception to its present incarnation in such forms as British intelligence's agent Bernard Lewis' view of the goals of the British Empire today.

So, when Rome's prolonged policy of mass murder of Christians failed to destroy Christianity, the evil Emperor Diocletian gave up the tactic of mass-murder, not because he was humane, but because he was a smart and infinitely corrupt tyrant who was shrewd enough to abandon what had been proven to be a hopeless quest. Nonetheless, despite that lesson from Roman history, a similar mass-murder against Jews was done by the German heir of the Roman Empire's tradition, Adolf Hitler. Thus, when all earlier efforts by the Roman Emperors to exterminate Christianity by Hitler-like methods had failed, Diocletian's faithful follower Constantine sought to accomplish, by corruption, what Rome had failed to effect by mass-murderous, overtly repressive force. Indeed, the current reality is that neither Christianity, nor Islam, could be extinguished from this planet, except by the destruction of the planet itself.

Thus, a would-be new Roman Empire, the heritage of Lord Shelburne's British Empire, reacted to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's victory over Lord Palmerston's puppet, the slaveowner's Confederacy. Britain reacted to the defeat of its Confederacy puppet, by reliance on corruption deployed within, through the New York financial center's leading tools of British financier interests within the U.S.A. Where mere force had failed, Constantine's strategy for destroying Christianity was by corruption, by legalizing it as a cult of the heathen Roman Imperial Pantheon. The corruption was expressed through Constantine's effort to control the selection of the bishops of an imperially legalized church. A similar, implicitly treasonous factor within London-linked U.S. financier circles has been used, repeatedly, in the use of corruption, as against the Franklin Roosevelt tradition by President Harry Truman, as a weapon to destroy the U.S.A., by corruption, from within.

Alexander the Great and his counselors of the Platonic Academy, defeated the design for such an oligarchical "world empire" at that time; but, with the close of the Second Punic War, and the fall of Syracuse and the deaths of Eratosthenes and his collaborator Archimedes, the emergence of the Roman Empire of the Mediterranean and adjoining regions was merely a matter of time.

Since that time, the tradition of the Roman Empire has persisted in various guises, as an earlier Rome was superseded by Diocletian's adoption of what had been the post-Peloponnesian War, Babylonian design for intended oligarchical world-rule: this time, by dividing the Roman Empire between its failing Western branch, Rome, and its Eastern branch, Byzantium.

So, the decline of Byzantium was exploited by Venice's financier oligarchy, to create the medieval system of Europe, in partnership with the brutish Norman chivalry.

So, the rise of modern European civilization was corrupted and nearly destroyed by the replacement of the failed Norman chivalry by the bestiality of the religious warfare launched by that satanic figure, Grand Inquisitor Tomàs de Torquemada, who sparked a 1492-1648 wave of Venice-steered religious warfare against modern European civilization.

This was the Torquemada who was the model chosen for crafting the synthetic personality of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, by the leader of Martinist freemasonary, Count Joseph de Maistre. This same model of Torquemada as "The Executioner," which de Maistre crafted directly for the creation of the personality of Napoleon as Emperor, was that copied for the creation of the same type of personality in the morally putrid flesh of Adolf Hitler.

The mass murder of Jews by Hitler, was and is the legacy of Torquemada and his nominally Christian, synarchist and kindred followers of Europe and throughout the Americas to the present day.

The legacy of the Norman and Torquemada's crusades, is the root of the present-day Anglo-Dutch Liberal system's intentions to stage a global religious warfare against Islam, the religious warfare which the British Arab Bureau's Bernard Lewis has done so much to foment today.

Why the Press Fraud Against the Pope

Jesus Christ was born a Jew, and was murdered as what Rome viewed as a threat of reestablishment of a Jewish state. Christ's principal Apostles were Jews, as this is typified by the close association of the Apostle Peter with the great Jewish teacher Philo of Alexandria. The exemplary relation of Jew and Christian, alike, to Islam, is that typified by the collaboration of Christian, Muslim, and Jew which was expressed in the collaboration between Charlemagne and the Baghdad Caliphate. It should have been always, as the great theologian of Europe's Fifteenth-Century Renaissance, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa presented this fact in his De Pace Fidei.

However, ever since Charlemagne's leadership in ecumenicism among Christian, Jew, and Islam, the legacy of the imperial Rome which perpetrated the judicial murder of Jesus Christ and masses of Christians, has repeatedly sought to reaffirm the oligarchical system of imperial reign, through putting Christians, Jews, and Muslims against one another's throats, as we see in the press orchestration of today's widespread, fraudulent representation of the implications of an excerpt from Pope Benedict's address. The history of the British Empire, to the present day of the British Arab Bureau's Bernard Lewis, is exemplary of this use of religious warfare as an instrument of attempted global imperial reign by Venetian-style financier-oligarchy, the same attempt expressed today by the use of "globalization" to eradicate the institution of the sovereign nation-state.

The corrupt action of the international press, in this matter, has the ominous character of an effort to arrange the assassination of a Pope Benedict not much liked among Lynne Cheney's friends in Liz Symons' London, and have the Islamic world blamed for the attempt.

Indeed, the widespread, fraudulent representation of the recent address on the subject of ecumenicism, by Pope Benedict, can not be competently understood, except as a fresh expression of the malicious propaganda-effort of the British Arab Bureau's Bernard Lewis (the assigned controller of Harvard-trained British agents Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Samuel P. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations"). So, as the Roman Empire sought to destroy Charlemagne's ecumenical collaboration among Christians, Jews, and Islam, through the Venetian-directed Norman Crusaders, the contemporary Anglo-Dutch-Liberal faction of today's imperial finance has created and deployed Bernard Lewis's pro-satanic dogma of "Clash of Civilizations," using not only corrupt U.S. creatures such as Kissinger, Huntington, and their ilk, but also Bush-loving fanatics whose adopted beliefs are close to the essentials of a Satanic cult.

Meanwhile, elements in the ranks of nominal Moslems who have been traditionally assets spun out of London's puppet Al-Afghani, are used by Anglo-Dutch-Liberal intelligence organizations, as creatures from a drama written and directed by Bernard Lewis, to seek, thus, to bring Islam to self-destruction of its peoples from within.

Witness those abysmally immoral degenerates, the fanatical backers of a lunatic President George W. Bush, Jr., whose very presence in office defiles the name of Christianity. Witness nominal Catholics who continue the tradition of the Habsburgs and Coudenhove-Kalergi in frankly fascist guise still today, the continuing tradition of the religious warfare of 1492-1648. See the fraudulent mass-media treatment of Benedict's proffer of a dialogue of religions, as being a part of the preparations for Vice President Dick Cheney's intended launching of a probably nuclear-armed attack on Iran at some moment of orchestrated opportunity prior to the November U.S. mid-term elections.

Such an attack on Iran would be the detonator of an unquenchable global holocaust which would not end until it had burned out the combustible material of our planet as a whole. Such an attack on Iran is the goal of those behind the fraudulent operation against Pope Benedict run on Vice President Cheney's behalf, through a complicit European and other corrupt, and usually lying mass media, on whose rotten moral character I have remarkably expert personal experience.

Any political leader of any nation, who is not a fool, will quickly see this matter as I do. Anyone foolish enough to play into the game which an orchestrated press has played through the fraudulent treatment of an excerpt taken from the Pope's remarks, will be guilty of any Hell on Earth which continued promotion of the press-hoax is clearly intended to facilitate.

1. WHAT MUST YOU BELIEVE?

The common conception of the nature of man and woman, shared among Jew, Christian, and Muslim, is that distinction emphasized in the conclusion of the first Chapter of the Book of Genesis. I can attest to the absolute, scientific validity of those verses from my personal knowledge. I can attest, on a related subject, to the absolute validity of that denunciation which was presented by Philo of Alexandria against the philosophically reductionist misconception of Creation. This is what we, all three, should believe.

The Creator of the universe must be recognized as a living personality, whose nature, as distinguished from that of all of the beasts, is reflected in the essential nature of the immortal essence of the creative powers, absent among the beasts, but which is the essential distinction of the human personality. On that account, the lives of all human individuals are sacred under the natural law of this eternal universe. So, we must see the relationship among Christian, Jew, and Muslim as Nicholas of Cusa portrays this principle in his famous dialogue De Pace Fidei. In this configuration of the social process, the individual's belief must be primarily accountable to this specific kind of personal relationship, as emphasized by Cusa, to the living Creator existing as the actively willful power within a finite, but boundlessly self-bounded universe.

So, as nations must be sovereign in their lawmaking, the community of sovereign peoples must seek constantly to come to a less imperfect common understanding of the natural law implicit in the Creator's governance of that universe. We must never overestimate the perfection of what we might consider to be our established belief. We shall always have much which is essential yet to discover, and a task of which we had not dreamed to do.

However, this needed understanding, by any person, or by any nation, or any body of religious belief, is necessarily imperfect in two ways. Firstly, we know the universe as it exists until now only imperfectly, as the Apostle Paul insists in his I Corinthians 13. Secondly, as Philo warns the Aristoteleans of his time, God the Creator never surrendered His power to change the universe which He had created. Philo's argument implies the question: Would any sane person pray to a Creator which they believed to be impotent? A wise Jewish Rabbi would say, therefore, and some whom I have known, have done, that the Messiah will not return according to some time-table, but only when the Creator chooses.

On the matter of the higher implications of the Creator's nature: The best evidence of scientific knowledge is, that as the Solar planetary system was generated, as a higher form of existence, by a young, fast-spinning Sun, God's universe is not fixed, is never entropic, but always anti-entropic, always working to develop and expand into higher states of existence. Mankind's essential mission is to act in the likeness of the Creator, and companion of that Creator, in this way.

Accordingly, we must approach the management of the affairs of the universe in a manner which is governed by a careful blending of certainties and humilities.

An Example: Modern European Science

Modern European science emerged out of the influence of the history of ancient Egypt, as in the form of what the ancient Classical Greeks, such as the Pythagoreans and Plato, knew as the scientific method of Sphaerics. Although this knowledge, as typified by the circles of Plato, was sustained by the Platonic Academy until about B.C. 212, until the deaths of Eratosthenes and Archimedes, it was largely suppressed by the influence of the Delphi Apollo cult on the ideology of ancient Rome, both before and after the imperial phase. Much of the knowledge was kept on record, in Greek, under Byzantium, and was echoed in the collected work of the Baghdad Caliphate, but this knowledge was not revived as a leading, active feature of culture until the Venetian-Norman ultramontane system of tyranny had collapsed, and the subsequent rise of the influence of the great ecumenical Council of Florence.

Modern science, and its beneficial effects on shaping mankind's conception of itself, was founded as experimental physical science by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, beginning with his De Docta Ignorantia. All of the valid currents of modern science are traced from that point through such students of Cusa as Luca Pacioli and Leonardo da Vinci. However, a systematic view of physical science as a whole was first established by Cusa follower Johannes Kepler's uniquely original discovery of universal gravitation. From that point on, science progressed along the lines marked chiefly by Fermat, Leibniz, Gauss, and Riemann, in opposition to the reductionists typified by such house-lackeys and followers of Venice's Paolo Sarpi as the scurrilous Galileo Galilei, the wicked René Descartes, the morally perverted John Locke, and the Eighteenth-Century radical reductionists de Moivre, d'Alembert, Euler, Lagrange, and the Nineteenth-Century followers of Laplace, Cauchy, Kelvin, Helmholtz, et al.

The relevant point to be emphasized here, is that the differences between the two, principally opposing currents in modern European physical science, between the followers of Cusa and Kepler, and the reductionist schools of empiricism, positivism, and existentialism, are essentially theological, that in the specific sense that the science of the followers of Cusa, Kepler, Leibniz, and Riemann, is emphatically a Christian view of the universe consistent with the referenced identification of man and woman in Genesis 1, whereas the reductionist schools in science find their roots in the tradition of the implicitly pro-Satanic school of the Delphi Apollo and Roman imperial Pantheon.

These same issues, which appear in such forms in the domain of European physical science since ancient Classical Greece, are related to the ugly fact that organized Christianity itself is dying in North America and Western and Central Europe, this as a result of the induced cultural paradigm-shift which was launched by such frankly Satanic cults as the Congress for Cultural Freedom led by such deceased and still living creatures of the U.S.A. as the late Professor Sidney Hook and currently active John Train.

This decadence spread within the Christian churches, including the Catholic Church, is typified by the accelerated shrinking of the clergy, through the combined effects of aging and death of the older ranks, and the lack of renewal of those ranks from younger volunteers. This decadence is also expressed, in appropriate forms, by the wild-eyed lunatic cults associated with the political base of increasingly demented U.S. President George W. Bush, Jr. Fewer and fewer serve, because fewer and fewer believe, a fault which lies not in the belief, but in the believer.

The most important, common, practical issue of religion and science, is the issue of truth. In both cases, the issue is essentially the same. No living person has ever seen a universal physical principle with the human senses, nor has he seen the Creator. Both objects exist, but since each encompasses the entire universe, neither is an object of sense-perception. Sense-perception perceives no more than the footprints of each. So, just as we are enabled, as Cusa, Kepler, and Leibniz were, to discover universal physical principles, we are enabled, by the same quality unique to the human mind, to recognize the proof of the existence of the Creator.

The problem behind this phenomenon of decadence today, is that the alternative to truth is what is often called "democracy," but is better recognized as Sophistry. The standard here is the same which Plato's dialogues present as the evidence against the Sophistry through which a formerly triumphant Athens destroyed itself through the adoption of that Sophistry associated with that Democratic Party of Athens which perpetrated the judicial murder of the saintly Socrates.

The characteristic of Sophistry is the substitution of belief in popular opinion of some group in society for scientific evidence, just as the idea of "democracy" associated with the Athens of Pericles induced Athens to destroy itself in the Peloponnesian War. The decline and fall of European civilization now, especially since the time of the official cover-up of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, and the earlier replacement of the policies of President Franklin Roosevelt by the corruption embodied in the Harry Truman Administration, has led into the virtual bankruptcy of the U.S.A. and Western and Central Europe today.

Powerful cultures are never destroyed except as global civilization is being destroyed today, by the decadence spreading from the U.S.A. and Europe, the decadence typified by the role of pro-British U.S. President Harry Truman and the rise of the so-called "68ers" of Europe and the Americas today.

The problem now is that advocacy of what is induced as widely accepted mass opinion, is used as a substitute for, and even a vicious opponent of truth. That is what the term "Sophistry" means. That is what the terms "rhetoric," or "spin," mean. "You can't go against popular opinion," is the sound of the death-rattle of whole civilizations.

2. TRUTH IS LOVE OF ALL MANKIND

Do you love mankind? Is love of all mankind your highest priority in all matters, including religious belief?

Take the case of the Netherlands today. One of the ugliest problems of moral corruption seen anywhere on this planet today, is the notorious Dutch policy toward persons past the age of seventy years. Euthanasia is cheaper than Nazi death-camps as a way of ridding a nation of an unwanted population. A nation which tolerates such practice of so-called "euthanasia" should be regarded as an outlaw nation until such time as it might mend its ways.

Of course, this policy of mass murder in the name of "euthanasia," was begun by my wealthy enemies inside the U.S.A., not Nazi Germany. The Dutch gave us the Elm disease; the U.S.A. gave Hitler and today's Dutch government the euthanasia disease.

This illustrates the point, that the worst crimes against humanity are those practiced in the name of adopted policies of governments, or, simply, the spread of a certain strain of popular opinion. Thus, the greatest of all crimes is lack of a primary emphasis on love for all mankind. Religious and racial hatred, such as anti-Semitism, or hatred against Islam, or, hatred of Christians, is, on record of known history, the most evil expression of criminality to be seen on the planet today.

Return attention to Nicholas of Cusa's De Pace Fidei on this account. If you love the Creator, you must view all branches of the human family in that light, as Cusa presents that argument there. This was the stroke of genius expressed by the role of Cardinal Mazarin, in bringing the warring people of Europe to the commitment to "love one another," in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. The great danger to all humanity today, is the attempts, on the one side, of pitiably deranged minds like that of President George W. Bush, Jr., or the brutishly pro-Satanic Vice-President Dick Cheney, to launch a war against Islam, and the danger that forces within Islam would tend to react in kind. In either case, especially in the case of such responses from both sides, civilization throughout this planet would be doomed to effects to be suffered for generations yet to come.

The same forces behind the fraudulent campaigns of a corrupt international press, in using a willfully lying fallacy of composition to stir up Islamic hatreds against a Pope Benedict, are the forces behind the intention of having Vice-President Cheney launch a terrible aerial attack of about a month's duration against Iran and other targets. If you wish a session in Hell for yourself and also for your descendants, if any actually live, continue the kind of pattern of action and reaction which the widespread press-hoax against Pope Benedict unleashed during this past week.

Latest From The Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement

Superconductivity Conference
Seattle LYM Conduct Between the Notes

by Wesley Irwin, LaRouche Youth Movement

LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) organizers attended the week-long Applied Superconductivity Conference in Seattle, Washington, Aug. 27-Sept. 1, to interject some scientific and economic reality, and to learn more about the amazing technology of superconductivity. We found an open response from hundreds of scientists, who need our help in keeping science alive. We happily discussed solutions to the breakdown of the U.S. science orientation, and the ongoing global economic breakdown.

Superconductivity is one of the most amazing scientific discoveries of the 20th Century. This still largely unexplained property causes certain materials, at very low temperatures, to lose all resistance to the flow of electricity, thus enabling a variety of new technological applications. Its development could revolutionize our use of electricity, enabling higher efficiencies than previously imagined were possible.

Discovered in 1911, by a Dutch physicist named H.K. Onnes, superconductivity was first demonstrated in cooled mercury metal. Through the 1900s, many other materials were found to be superconductors at temperatures below 23.2 kelvin. These materials are referred to as low-temperature superconductors (LTS), while those discovered decades later are known today as high-temperature superconductors (HTS), and are used at temperatures above 23.3K....

...full article, PDF

U.S. Economic/Financial News

July Trade Deficit Sets a Record

As a searing indictment of the gross incompetence of Bush-Cheney Administration policy, the U.S. trade deficit on goods and services climbed to $68.0 billion in July, the highest monthly level ever, the Department of Commerce reported Sept. 12.

However, restricting attention solely to physical goods—excluding services—the U.S. trade deficit reached $73.4 billion in July, likewise unprecedented. For July relative to June of this year, physical goods exports fell by $1.3 billion to $85.7 billion, while imports rose $2.1 billion to reach $159.1 billion. America now imports twice as many physical goods as it exports.

Were the present trend to continue for the rest of the year—and it could get worse—it is projected that the U.S. trade deficit for goods and services would reach $776.6 billion for 2006, compared with $716.7 billion for 2005; the U.S. trade deficit only for physical goods would reach $843.4 billion for 2006, compared with $782.7 billion for 2005.

Freddie Mac SWAT Team To Deal with 'Flood of Foreclosures'

Despite the lies from Bush Administration officials that the U.S. housing market is "basically sound," and "crash-proof," the secondary housing market giant Freddie Mac is fervidly working with banks to construct a SWAT team intended to stave off the wave of housing foreclosures before they rupture the U.S. financial system. Under the headline, "Lenders Rally To Stem Foreclosures as Interest Rates Rise," the Sept. 10 Los Angeles Times wrote that "The lending business is marshalling its forces on an unprecedented scale to get in front of what could be a flood of foreclosures." Freddie Mac is coordinating. Craig Nickerson, executive VP of expanding markets at Freddie Mac stated, "We're trying to create a comprehensive safety net to help people stay in their homes. But 167,000 new families are entering foreclosure every three months, according to the Mortgage Bankers Assn. And that could just be the proverbial tip of the iceberg."

The gimmicks that Freddie Mac is proposing can't work. One such gimmick, the L.A. Times reported, is to have the huge balance a homeowner owes on a mortgage rolled over into a new loan, but at a slightly lower interest rate. However, the fact that Freddie Mac has chosen this moment to assemble such a team, demonstrates that within the home mortgage lending domain, which includes all the big U.S. banks, there are many sweaty palms ... and soiled pants.

* One of the markets that most signifies the crisis is the San Francisco Bay Area, where the average price of a new home exceeds $550,000. The Internet website patrick.net reported, under the headline, "U.S. Housing Crash Continues: San Francisco Bay Area Hit Hard," that there is near hysteria in the once red-hot home market there. Among more than two dozen reasons patrick.net assembled as to why the market will crash are: "82% of recent Bay Area [mortgage] loans are adjustable not fixed. This means a big hit to the finances of many owners every time interest rates go up, and this will only get worse." In addition, "Massive job loss. More than 300,000 jobs are gone from the Bay Area since the dot-com bubble popped. This is the worst percentage job loss in the last 60 years" (emphasis added). I.e., people who don't have jobs don't pay mortgages.

Foreclosures Sweep Midwest in Wake of Auto Layoffs

Foreclosures in the Metro Detroit area jumped a whopping 137%—more than double—in the first eight months of 2006, compared to last year. According to RealtyTrac, a real estate firm that tracks foreclosed properties, foreclosures rose sharply from 14,789 to 35,041, in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, and Livingston counties during January through August, compared to the same period last year. In August, Michigan had the sixth-highest foreclosure rate, worsening from 10th in August 2005.

A mass foreclosed-home auction in the state will take place in late September, with more than 250 bank-owned single-family homes, condos, and duplexes on the auction block. The majority of the properties, about 150 in all, lie within 60 miles of Detroit.

The deindustrialized Midwest leads the nation in foreclosure rates. According to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), of the weakest 20 metropolitan area housing markets in the U.S., eight are in Michigan, and 17 are in the Midwest in other so-called "auto-wreck states."

Nationwide, 115,292 properties entered some stage of foreclosure in August, RealtyTrac reported, up 24% from July, and 53% higher than a year ago. This was the second-highest monthly foreclosure total of 2006. Homeowners unable to afford rising monthly payments on adjustable-rate mortgages, for example, are finding it difficult to sell their homes for what they owe on their mortgages or to refinance.

Five states—California, Florida, Texas, Ohio, and Illinois—accounted for half of the nation's new foreclosures in August.

Collapse of U.S. Housing Market Highlighted in Swiss Financial Paper

"Alarming Decline of Housing Market" reads the headline of a special feature in Switzerland's Neue Zuericher Zeitung. It notes that the U.S. real estate market is "spreading ever-larger worries among investors." Among the features reported are that all indices point to a slowdown, which will hit both the economy as well as the stock market; moreover construction investments in August suffered their biggest plunge in five years. Obviously, the housing market is experiencing a significant downturn, "but some sceptics rather call it a crash."

Merrill Lynch has published a chart showing a strong correlation over decades between the housing construction index of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and the S&P stock market index, with the latter following by a 12-month time lag. As the housing construction index has already crashed by 50%, the outlook for the U.S. stock market is "not very promising." There can no longer be any doubt that a "bubble" has emerged in the housing market, states NZZ. It has been built on cheap central bank money, a huge increase of mortgage debt, and the widespread use of risky financial instruments. By refinancing their mortgages under such circumstances, American private households could turn their houses into ATMs. According to NZZ, U.S. homeowners cashed out $850 billion (figure not yet confirmed by EIR) by mortgage refinancings just in the second quarter of 2006, with two-thirds of the money going directly into consumption. But as interest rates rise, many mortgage debtors, in particular those with adjustable rates (ARMs), are running into trouble. The Dominion Bond Rating Service already speaks of a coming "payment shock" for home owners.

Mortgage Bankers Data Show Home-Mortgage Bubble Trouble

Data released by the Mortgage Bankers Association Sept. 14 shows major problems in the home-mortgage market. Some examples:

* More Americans are falling behind on home mortgage payments. The problem is expected to grow as adjustable rates reset higher. Homeowners with shaky credit are falling behind on payments, especially where job losses have hit local economies, e.g., in Ohio, Alabama, Tennessee, Michigan, and West Virginia. Among sub-prime credit borrowers with higher interest rates and adjustable loans resetting to higher rates, 12.2% were late paying loans in April-June. About 25% of all mortgages carry adjustable rates, and more than half of these loans are to sub-prime borrowers. Delinquencies are expected to rise over the next year, as adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) shift to higher rates.

* Sub-prime ARM borrowers are at increased risk of entering foreclosure. They hit 2.01%, the highest number since the fourth quarter of 2003.

* Record high of home foreclosures on adjustable rate mortgages for prime borrowers in 2006. These are homeowners with good credit ratings. Their share of mortgages entering foreclosure went up to 0.27% from 0.21% three months previously. The average rate for an ARM has risen by 1% since 2005, at the same time as energy and insurance costs are rising.

House Dems Back Farm Drought Relief vs. White House

On Sept. 12, the House Democratic Caucus sent a letter to the Republican leadership, by asking for time to be scheduled in the current session "to debate and vote on emergency agricultural disaster assistance for 2005 and 2006," before the October recess. They asked for a "comprehensive agriculture disaster package." The letter points out, "Democrats have sought to provide relief several times in the House. Last Fall ... [measures were] defeated by party-line votes.... The Senate included agriculture disaster assistance [for $4 billion] in both of their emergency supplemental bills. Unfortunately, earlier this year, under pressure from President Bush's veto threat, House Republicans failed to stand up for disaster assistance," and it was eliminated.

On Sept. 6, a bipartisan $6 billion farm disaster relief bill was filed in the Senate by 12 Senators, led by Kent Conrad (D-ND), and Norm Coleman (R-Minn). It includes $4 billion to deal with the devastating impacts of the High Plains drought, and covers both 2005 and 2006. Conrad said they intend to attach this to some remaining legislation in the Senate. The previous $4 billion farm disaster relief measure, passed by the Senate, and intended for inclusion in the Defense Supplemental bill, was squashed in June by House/Senate conference, at the demand of Cheney/Bush.

On Sept. 6, White House spokesman Alex Conant responded that the administration still opposes the farm disaster relief measure, cavilling that Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns will wait until after the fall harvest to see if any such action is warranted.

Backing the Senate farm disaster relief are Republicans Coleman and Jim Talent (Mo); Democrats Conrad and Dorgan (ND), Nelson (Neb), Johnson (SD), Salazar (Colo), Baucus (Mont), Cantwell (Wash), Durbin (Ill), Obama (Ill), and Dayton (Minn).

World Economic News

Ecuador Prez Candidate Moots 'Argentine Style Debt Restructuring'; Wall Street Gets Jitters

During a trip to New York Sept. 10-16, Ecuadoran Presidential candidate Rafael Correa said, "We cannot dismiss an Argentine solution," when asked about dealing with this small oil-producing country's $10.37 billion foreign debt. He insisted that no more than 3%-3.5% of a country's GNP should be devoted to foreign debt service. Ecuador is currently paying 7%. Speaking to an investors group in Manhattan, Correa said, "We have to pay Ecuadorans first, especially their social needs." He also said that all debt would be reviewed, as most loan deals have proven "detrimental" to the country's interests.

Correa, an outspoken nationalist who was Ecuador's Finance Minister until his ouster last year, is running a close third in the polls. Ecuador's hotly contested Presidential election is scheduled for Oct. 15. Correa is a strong supporter of the current government's decision last May to oust Occidental Petroleum from Ecuador and take back its oil fields. Correa is also a furious opponent of a free-trade agreement with the U.S., currently trammeled up in negotiations, and says his government would take back control of the Manta military base that has served as a U.S, military outpost in the Andes since 1999. He says his government would break ties with the IMF and World Bank, and supports South American integration and a regional currency, which he says would enable Ecuador to pursue "an orderly exit" from dollarization.

At least one of the investment houses attending Correa's Sept. 12 presentation in New York City, Morgan Stanley, told media that while some candidates often talk tough before elections but moderate their line after being elected, "it would be naive" to speculate that a President Correa would not default, "given his comments this morning and the consistency of his view on debt."

United States News Digest

Bush Sr. Allies Break with White House on Torture

Washington, D.C. sources reported to EIR Sept. 14 that one of the biggest developments in recent days is former Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell's Sept. 14 letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), supporting McCain and opposing the Bush White House efforts to skirt the Geneva Conventions in the interrogation and prosecution of alleged terrorists. Several hours after the Powell letter was released by McCain to the public, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted 15-9 to reject the White House's reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions. Committee chairman John Warner (R-Va) and three other Republicans joined with the Democrats in opposing the White House.

Washington sources say that the break by Powell and the alignment with McCain is reflective of a much broader split with the White House, on the part of three distinct Republican Party factions: traditional conservatives, "country club" patricians, and liberals. Furthermore, Powell's defection from the White House signals that the so-called "Bush Sr." Republicans are no longer taking their orders from Papa Bush, and are decisively breaking with the Bush-Cheney coalition, which is now based almost exclusively on right-wing religious fanatics and neoconservative fascists. The sources say that two of Bush Sr.'s most formerly loyal associates, Powell and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, have led the break, and are now seriously weighing whether John McCain is capable of shedding his own prior neocon associations, to be an ally of the dissident Republicans. Powell's letter even sparked rumors among Republicans that McCain may be quietly talking with Powell about a McCain-Powell ticket in 2008.

One source emphasized his shock at the White House bungling over the torture and tribunal issue. "This was really, really stupid on their part," he said. The source added that President Bush's personal appearance on Capitol Hill Sept. 14, to press the White House case for continued non-compliance with the Geneva Conventions, was another serious blunder, showing just how weak and desperate the Administration has become. "The President rarely goes to Capitol Hill, except for the State of the Union," the source noted. "It is tantamount to a parliamentary system, if the President goes begging to Congress. Very ill advised," he concluded.

Novak Account of Armitage Role Changes Nothing

A senior U.S. intelligence source provided the following assessment of the Robert Novak column of Sept. 14, which accused former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage of playing a far more proactive role in the Valerie Plame Wilson leak. Novak reported that Armitage had told him that Plame was with the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, and had encouraged Novak to write a column on Plame's role in encouraging the fact-finding mission to Niger of her husband, Amb. Joseph Wilson, just days after Wilson's op-ed appeared in the New York Times on July 6, 2003.

The source noted that, at the time of the Armitage-Novak meeting, Secretary of State Colin Powell was under intense attack from neoconservatives, who were seeking his ouster. Armitage's role in the Plame leak, the source commented, was part of Powell's effort to hold on to his job. "This was a demonstration of loyalty by Armitage and, by extension, by Powell as well," the source explained. However, the Plame leak was not an individual action, certainly not an individual indiscretion. "This was a policy decision that preceded Armitage's meeting with Novak." The source asked: "Where did the policy decision come from? The Oval Office or the Office of the Vice President?" He concluded that, with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's decision not to indict Karl Rove, all the evidence pointed to Cheney and Lewis Libby. "The handwritten notes by Dick Cheney on the Wilson op-ed are just about a smoking gun—indicating that the policy to nail Wilson and Plame came from Cheney."

Recall that Fitzgerald knew about Armitage's role in the Novak leak from his first day on the job as Special Counsel. By October 2003, Armitage had come forward to Powell and to the general counsel of the State Department, revealing his role in the Plame leak, and had been interviewed by Fitzgerald in the first days of the independent probe.

IAEA: Hoekstra Iran Report Is 'Outrageous and Dishonest'

Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency sent a letter to the Bush Administration and to House Intelligence Committee chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich), calling the report on Iran written by committee staffer Fredrick Fleitz "outrageous and dishonest," and offering evidence to refute its central claims, the Washington Post reported Sept. 14. The agency noted five major errors in the committee's report. Fleitz (whom the Post identified as a one-time CIA officer and special assistant to John R. Bolton) is also working on a separate report about North Korea for Hoekstra's committee. A draft of the report includes several assertions about North Korea's weapons program that intelligence officials say they cannot substantiate.

Electoral Revolt Evident in Sept. 12 Primaries

The Democratic national bureaucracy is so far behind the voters, that the Democratic candidates they did not endorse, who took a stronger stand on key issues, such as the war in Iraq, won their primaries despite the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

* New Hampshire social worker Carol Shea-Porter won the Democratic primary for Congress against a candidate who had been endorsed by the Party. Porter wants a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq, and won without institutional fundraising, instead using volunteers.

* In Maryland, Rep. Albert Wynn, who never polled less than 80% in any primary since 1992, squeaked by with an 8% win over challenger Donna Edwards, who attacked Wynn for having voted for the Iraq war.

* In Florida, former Air Force fighter pilot Bob Bowman, who campaigned on the charge that every dirty policy of the Bush Administration "marches through Cheney's office," that 9/11 was a conspiracy by the government, and that Cheney and Bush should be impeached, won the 15th District Democratic primary with 54% of the vote.

The Republicans are trying to limit Democratic wins by supporting moderate Republican candidates who oppose many of the policies of the Administration. In Rhode Island, incumbent Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R), a moderate, who didn't even vote for Bush in the last election, won the primary 54%-46% thanks to national GOP attack ads against his opponent.

Worried that a Congressional seat up for grabs in Arizona would go to the Democrat if a conservative Republican ran, the national GOP supported a moderate in the primary; a former GOP state chair called the Washington bureaucrats "idiots," for splitting the Republican vote.

Murtha Slams Rumsfeld for Collapse of Military Readiness

On Sept. 13, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa) released a report documenting the collapse of Army readiness. Army brigades are turning around between deployments in less than a year, and are unable to fully retrain because they lack the equipment, especially armored vehicles and trucks, which have been worn out in Iraq and Afghanistan, causing them to be redeployed at less than full combat readiness. "In effect," Murtha says, "the Army has become a 'hand-to-mouth' organization. Its inability to get ahead of the deployment and training curves is rooted in the Administration's miscalculations and blind optimism about troop and industrial surge requirements for the U.S. occupation of Iraq."

Murtha also reported that while the Army is meeting its recruiting and retention goals, the measures it is taking to do so may be resulting in a lower quality force. He says that company commanders are reporting that disciplinary actions resulting from drug and alcohol abuse have skyrocketed in the past year. "To suggest that the Global War on Terror will last for years, yet fail to even acknowledge—let alone take steps to address—the Army's readiness, equipment, and personnel shortfalls, is viewed as short-sighted at best. At worst, the future security and deterrent power of the United States is dangerously at risk," Murtha concluded.

In conjunction with the report, Murtha also introduced a resolution in the House calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation "for the good of the country," and to "restore credibility both at home and abroad."

The resolution says: "The first step in restoring that credibility must be to demonstrate accountability for the mistakes that have been made in prosecuting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq"; to "reconstitute our military readiness, and refocus on the threats to national security posed by diffuse and proliferating terrorist cells as well as belligerent states."

The resolution blames Rumsfeld for the failure to capture Osama bin Laden during the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, by failing to commit sufficient troops; failure to ensure adequate body armor and protective gear for troops in Iraq; failure to anticipate the troop strength required; failure of training and supervision which led to abuses at Abu Ghraib; failure to address flagging readiness of U.S. ground forces; and failure to ensure adequate accounting of billions of dollars of Coalition Provisional Authority expenditures.

Briefed on this, Lyndon LaRouche took note that this is, in fact, another task for both using, and expanding, the machine-tool capabilities and principles of the automobile industry, which the free-trade lunatics are in the process of shutting down wholesale. Much of what the Pentagon is failing to replace successfully is rolling stock; some is armor; all is machinery and material the auto plants have built before—a task that can be handled successfully under the Emergency Re-Tooling Act proposed by LaRouche.

Specter Wiretap Bill Passes Senate Panel

The Senate Judiciary Committee passed a wiretap bill introduced by Committee chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa) on a partisan 10 to 8 vote, on Sept. 13, after rejecting all Democratic amendments on similar 10 to 8 votes. The bill, which Specter negotiated with the White House, gives the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court the jurisdiction to decide whether or not the NSA domestic wiretapping program is Constitutional, but doesn't require the President to submit the program to the court for review. Specter went ahead with the bill, however, on the basis of a promise from President Bush that he would do that. The committee otherwise rejected all Democratic amendments, also on partisan votes, all of which sought to increase Congressional oversight in other ways. As Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc) noted early during the committee debate, "none of us have enough information to legislate on this."

Ibero-American News Digest

Kirchner: Defend Democracy with Justice and Equality

Speaking Sept. 7 at the launching of a literacy program, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner slammed the bogus "public safety" campaign run by right-winger Juan Carlos Blumberg, whose demonstration in Buenos Aires that same day accused the President of being a power-hungry authoritarian who has failed to protect citizens from street crime. The real issue here isn't public safety, Kirchner said. "Democracy and security ... aren't built either with the end of a stick, or with determined attitudes or schemes." Obviously there are things that can complement the state's actions, he added, "but in a society which marginalizes its children, as ours does, which offers education only selectively ... this gives us cause to seriously reflect."

For there to be real democracy, "everyone must have equal opportunity; we must open the doors to everyone, and ensure that everyone has the same rights," Kirchner said. People must be able to have their own homes, and jobs, and family life around the evening dinner table, where each member reviews his or her day—parents and children. That was taken away from people as a result of the 2001 crisis.

Implicitly referencing Blumberg, who is a possible 2007 Presidential contender, Kirchner said some sectors seize on the normal difficulties that democratic processes experience for their own opportunistic aims, because they want a piece of power. But these same forces "get very nervous" about the effort to guarantee the equal rights for all citizens. "They get nervous when we fight impunity, when we seek justice, when we create jobs and open schools' and universities' doors to all Argentines," because these sectors think "that some things should only be offered selectively."

To Solve the Immigration Crisis: Develop Mexico!

Mexico must choose between two diametrically opposed economic policies, Andrés Manuel López Obrador told supporters at his movement's nightly informational assembly in the Zocalo on Saturday, Sept. 9. The economic policy reigning today, which aims to benefit only a few, must be replaced with a policy which fosters productive activities and generates employment, he declared.

López Obrador spoke following a representative of Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. who had addressed the rally, and attacked the immigration problem as a product of the lack of jobs. "This is like exile," he said. Under the government of Vicente Fox, "3 million Mexicans, around 500,000 a year, have abandoned the country, have gone into exile, out of necessity. They have abandoned their families, abandoned their peoples, out of necessity and in order to seek work on the other side of the border. That is why we are going to insist that there must be a new economy, which has to set productive activity into motion, and which has to generate jobs."

So, too, the right wing has set out to shut down public education, to give education over to "the market, as if it were a commodity, to see who could acquire it," he continued. We maintain that education is a right of the people, and it cannot be turned into a privilege. A family's economic or social condition must not matter; everyone has this right. But a silent privatization of public education has been going on, carried out by constantly cutting the public education budget. The result is that there aren't enough spaces in the high schools or universities, and thousands of students are being turned away each year. If we don't act, he told his movement, we will condemn thousands of students to a lack of schooling and deny them the opportunity to learn. The only future left for these youth is the street and anti-social behavior. And they wonder why there is so much violence!

"If we want to live in peace, there have to be jobs, there has to be well-being, there has to be education. That is the formula," he reiterated.

Lastly, López Obrador emphasized the necessity of revising the North American Free Trade Accord (NAFTA), to rescind the free import of corn and beans which is scheduled to go into effect in 2008. That would be the final blow for 3 million Mexican families, he exclaimed. Then you'll see emigration!

Renewed Push for Expanding Brazil's Nuclear Program

Brazilian President Lula da Silva told O Estado de Sao Paulo Sept. 7 that he favors cooperation on nuclear power with Venezuela and other nations. "We defend international cooperation in this area and the right of all countries to have access to nuclear technology for peaceful uses, under the supervision of specialized multilateral agencies."

The pro-nuclear faction within Lula's government is still fighting, however, to get construction restarted on Brazil's third reactor, before the nuclear specialists all retire. A decision in favor of the completion, at long last, of the Angra III nuclear plant will be announced after the Oct. 1 Presidential elections, Brazilian Science and Technology Minister Sergio Rezende told Carta Capital magazine (Sept. 8 edition). Rezende has tried repeatedly for more than a year to get President Lula to order work to begin. The Environmental Ministry and the hefty environmentalist wing of Lula's PT party remain adamantly opposed. Reportedly, however, nine of the 11 Cabinet ministers involved in the decision are now in favor, with the latest convert being Mines and Energy Minister Silas Rondeau, who says the "markets" have convinced him the price is now "competitive." Finance Minister Guido Mantega is on board, Electrobras officials reported on Aug. 30.

The contract to build Angra 3 was signed 30 years ago last June, but geopolitical attacks and the environmentalist movement have stalled its completion at an accumulated cost of $1.2 billion. The monetary loss is nothing, compared to its effect on Brazil's scientific community. At least 200 engineers were sent to Germany in the 1970s and 1980s to be trained, a capability that is about to be lost forever, the president of the Brazilian Nuclear Energy Association (Aben), Edson Kuramoto, warns. Kuramoto told Carta Capital that the average age of Brazil's nuclear specialists is now 50, and the majority will retire within the next ten years.

The Mines and Energy Ministry's ten-year plan projects that construction would begin in 2007, and be completed by 2013. The French Areva group has made various financing proposals to the Brazilian government.

Uruguay Seeks 'Fast-Track' Free-Trade Accord with Bush

Despite the fact that his overtures to the U.S. have provoked a brawl inside his Cabinet, and a general strike by the national trade-union federation scheduled for Sept. 21, Uruguay's President Tabare Vasquez has met with his Foreign Trade Committee on pushing forwards a fast-track free-trade agreement with Washington, and may shortly send a delegation to Washington to further explore the matter prior to making a final decision in early October.

Such an accord would threaten the integrity of both the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) and South America's informal "Presidents' Club" in the region which has stood up to the Bush Administration's insane policies on several fronts. Right on cue, Paraguay's neocon Vice President Luis Castiglione, one of Dick Cheney's good friends, showed up in Uruguay on Sept. 13 to meet with Vasquez, and to loudly proclaim that "in Paraguay, we are very interested and are closely watching Uruguay's contacts with the U.S.," because "trade accords beyond Mercosur are important for Uruguay's and Paraguay's development."

Brazil and Argentina are seeking to avoid confrontation with Mercosur's two smaller countries, while hurrying to put the $100 million Structural Convergence Fund (FOCEM) into place to offer special credit lines to both nations and begin to address their complaints of unfair trade practices within the customs union. They have even indicated they will be flexible about possible trade deals outside Mercosur, provided that these won't harm Mercosur's fundamental principles and structure. But synarchist financiers are trying to exploit existing tensions to undermine regional unity.

Russia and the CIS News Digest

SCO Prime Ministers Meet in Tajikistan

Prime Ministers from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member countries met Sept. 15 in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. Alongside the ministers from China, Russia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, observer nations and guests Iran, India, Mongolia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan were present. Russian Deputy Premier Mikhail Kamynin, who accompanied Premier Mikhail Fradkov, told RIA Novosti that the meeting would take up projects for hydroelectric power in Central Asia, transportation routes, roads, fiber-optic communications, and partnerships in science, technology, and agriculture. The transportation "pilot projects" on the agenda include a Caspian Sea-to-China corridor across the territory of Russia, Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. The SCO Prime Ministers resolved to study the idea of forming an energy club, to be concretized during 2007 on the basis of proposals from Kazakstan and Russia, the largest fuel and energy producers in the SCO.

Putin Says Energy Exports Will Shift Toward Asia

At his latest reception for Western reporters and academics, who had attended the annual Valday Club conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the notion of Russia as an "energy superpower." In general, he said he preferred to "abandon the terminology of the past," the word "superpower" being a legacy of the Cold War. He emphasized that Russia was looking at alternative energy sources, especially nuclear, aiming to bring its share in Russia's power generation to 25-30%.

As for Russian energy exports, the Russian President noted that currently only 3% go to Asian countries, but that within 10-15 years, Asia will account for 30% of these exports.

Russia Protests U.S. Abetting of Terrorism

The Russian Foreign Ministry called in an American diplomat Sept. 14, to deliver an official protest over a conference held by the Jamestown Foundation on the North Caucasus. One of the invited participants was a former representative of the late Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov. Russia protested that "to hold, on American soil, events that propagandize terrorism contradicts the international obligations of the USA." The note stressed, "The American authorities' de facto connivance at anti-Russian actions is of concern, in the context of the developing anti-terrorism partnership of our countries."

LaRouche, LYM, Potential for Change in U.S. Featured in Russia

An article by Prof. Yuri Gromyko in the Aug. 30 issue of Russky Zhurnal takes up current issues of economic policy and national identity, which are under discussion in Russia. At the end of piece, Gromyko stressed that the world strategic context is critical, for the success or failure of any policy measures in Russia. Most important, he writes, is for Russia to establish a better relationship with the leadership of the U.S. Democratic Party, while hoping that the latter get rid of such advisers as Richard Holbrooke. "From this standpoint," wrote Gromyko, "it was very important that on Aug. 16 there was an appearance on the First Channel of Russian television, of Lyndon LaRouche, the prominent American politician, who locates the causes of asymmetric warfare in Southwest Asia, in the onrushing crash of the world financial system. Lyndon LaRouche is known for his hard line against the neocons, as well as for his initiatives to revive the traditions of F.D. Roosevelt within the U.S. Democratic Party. The LaRouche Youth Movement, which he has created, is an interesting political form of mobilizing young people, upholding high standards of education, and a program of reindustrialization for the U.S.A. on the basis of the latest scientific discoveries. The leaders of the Russian youth movement Nashi have something to learn from the leaders of the LaRouche Youth Movement." (Nashi is the youth group, sponsored by the Kremlin.)

Russian Bank Official Assassinated

Andrei Kozlov, one of the Russian Central Bank's deputy chairmen, died Sept. 13 after being shot at close range as he left a soccer match. Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, along with many others, quickly linked the murder with Kozlov's role in pushing through bank regulation and anti-money-laundering measures. His killing is the first of such a high-ranking Russian official since President Putin took office. In the 1990s, there were about 25 attempts on bankers and banking officials, 16 of whom were killed. Other recent high-profile assassinations or attempts in and around Moscow were the murder of Forbes editor Paul Klebnikov in 2004, and an attempt on electricity chief Anatoli Chubais last year.

Russia Plans Mars Mission; Sino-Russian Lunar Cooperation Nears

In October 2009, the Russian space agency intends to launch an eight-ton spacecraft to the Martian moon, Phobos. Phobos-Grunt (meaning "soil"), resembling a giant spider, will have a drilling device that will excavate a sample of soil from Phobos to be returned to the Earth. The lander is designed to be active on the surface of Phobos for a year, and will image the landing site to help choose the spot for drilling and sampling.

The Russian government increased the space agency's budget by 30% over 2004-2005 and an additional 50% increase is planned by the end of this year. For the first decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, the space program that survived was what had existed from the investment, momentum, and hardware from the Soviet era. According to Russian officials, the multi-billion-dollar Phobos-Grunt mission will be funded 75% by Russia and 25% by foreign partners, including China. Russia has not launched a successful mission to Mars in the past 30 years. Major problems have entailed high-technology and long-lived electronics and other components, which international cooperation should help upgrade.

The Russia/China standing intergovernmental space subcommission on space, otherwise, is moving toward agreement on cooperation in lunar exploration. Russian Space Agency head Anatoli Perminov said Sept. 11 that the subcommission will hold its concluding session in Beijing at year's end. "We have already adopted a cooperation program with China for 2007-2009," he said. By the end of this year, the program may extend to the Moon. He said that the previous relationship between the two nations was that "China was a buyer and we were a seller." We have moved beyond that, Perminov said. "China is now a leading space power."

China will kick off its three-phase lunar program with the launch of its Chang'e lunar orbiter in April. For the second and third phases, China is open to international cooperation. These will involve lunar landers and rovers, with which the Russians have lots of experience. Russia is planning to launch its Moon Globe project in 2012, involving an orbiter, landing vehicle, and penetrators to explore the subsurface. In July, Russian officials attending a space conference in Beijing said it was quite possible that the two countries' lunar programs would share equipment that would be installed on each other's lunar craft.

Independence Referenda in South Ossetia, Transdniestria

President Eduard Kokoity of South Ossetia, the autonomous district in Georgia, announced Sept. 11 that there will be a national referendum on Nov. 12, coinciding with Presidential elections. Its one question will ask if South Ossetia should "retain its current status as an independent state" (as it claims to be), and seek international recognition.

A similar referendum is taking place much sooner, Sept. 17, in the Transdniestria district of Moldova. There, the referendum asks people to vote on affirming independence and moving towards Russia, or reintegrating with Moldova. Russian TV showed interviews with local commentators, projecting a 95% vote to "go with Russia."

While the South Ossetia vote is farther off, the situation remains tense there after the Georgian Defense Minister's helicopter was hit by gunfire in the region, earlier this month. On Sept. 9, South Ossetian Internal Affairs Minister Mikhail Mindzayev threatened that any military aircraft in South Ossetian airspace would be shot down, and that if Georgia moved militarily against the region, South Ossetia would "destroy Georgia's economic and military facilities," with a campaign of sabotage.

Southwest Asia News Digest

Lavrov on Iran: Breakthroughs in Negotiations Still Possible

Just back from his tour of Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, interviewed in the Sept. 11 issue of Vremya Novostei, turned to the latest developments around Iran. "Involving Iran in regional affairs as an equal partner," he said, could be more effective than any other measures. While sanctions against Iran are a possibility, Lavrov said, "so are breakthroughs in negotiations." While still travelling, Lavrov had strongly denounced stories that surfaced Sept. 8, to the effect that UN sanctions on Iran would mean a halt to Russia's construction work on the Busher nuclear plant in Iran. "This is not a report, but a clear provocation," he said.

In continuing Southwest Asian diplomacy by Russia, it has been announced that Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert will visit Moscow on Oct. 15, marking the 15th anniversary of the establishment of Israeli-Russian diplomatic relations.

See InDepth for "Iran: Turning the Tables on the War Party," by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach.

Asia News Digest

India, Inc. Seeks Role in Civilian Nuclear Energy

While the U.S.-India nuclear agreement is still held up in the U.S. Congress, India's top business houses, led by Ratan Tata of the Tata Sons, Anil Ambani of Reliance Industries, and the Larsen & Toubro firm, have written letters to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for a full-fledged participation in India's enhanced nuclear program, DNA-India reported Sept. 10.

Despite enthusiasm expressed by the Manmohan Singh government on private participation, in