Note to Readers:
EIR suspended publication for the Independence Day holiday. It will return next next week, with an issue dated July 17, 2009
(EIR Online date July 14).
Lyndon LaRouche addressed a luncheon with members of the diplomatic corps, on July 1. Here are his opening remarks. The discussion that followed is not available for publication.
The theme should be today, throughout the world, that the world is in the greatest financial-monetary crisis, and economic crisis, in modern world history. This has been in process since the Summer of 2007, when I first forecast this thing. And it's getting worse. It has had political ramifications, of course, throughout the world, and most governments have been resisting the reality, by trying to pretend that this was only a financial crisis of some sort, that it would go away, that it could be fixed. And policies have been made on the assumption that this thing is not going to crash, that there's going to be a recovery after a "period of pain."
Well, it's more than a period of pain. The present world financial-monetary system is about to go out of existence. And the only chance for having a civilization, is to put this world system into bankruptcy reorganization, and to replace the present financial-monetary system, with a credit system.
Now, the crucial point here, is that very few people know what a credit system is. Everyone is convinced that monetary systems have ruled the world, and will continue to rule the world. And they assume they can just call up an accountant, which is the worst thing you can do these days. All you'll get is bad news; and you'll get sickness, and family break-ups and so forth.
But the issue is, that the world is governed by an empire. The empire has existed in European civilization since the period of the Peloponnesian War, in which certain monetary interests, money interests, as such, have been higher in rank than governments. Sometimes this has taken the form of an empire as such. But today's empires are not empires of governments as such; they're empires of consortia of financial interests and monetary interests.
And you have institutions, especially in a so-called free market, which is the worst form of government imaginable: In a free market, so-called, the monetary interests are above government. International financial-monetary interests are higher than government. These governments control the currency, the monetary systems of the world, and of nations, and this is what constitutes a real empire. People above government, controlling government, where governments are supposed to respect the "free market"—and the free market is the system of slavery of governments.
Now, you've seen a manifestation of this, because back in the Summer of 2007, I announced this crisis which has been coming on ever since, and indicated there was a remedy, and indicated what the temporary remedy was for the United States: to put the system into bankruptcy reorganization. And actually, if civilization is going to survive, we're going to have to cancel most of these monetary-financial claims which are outstanding out there, and go back to what was called the "American System."
Now, the American System, which was developed in what became the United States, was unique. No other part of the world initiated such a system, as the type we initiated. The problem of our country, today, is, at various points, powerful interests, international interests, have intruded upon, and been able to wreck our system. And have brought us into subjugation to an international monetary system, in large degree, especially since 1968-1973.
So, the world as a whole is run by monetary systems. The monetary systems are under a free trade system, are completely international. International financier-monetary interests control governments; every government of Europe, every government of the Americas, is today governed by an imperial power called an international monetary system. It fixes the rates.
The United States was unique in its organization from the beginning. Back in days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, between 1620 and 1688, in that period, the Massachusetts Bay Colony developed a credit system, it was called a scrip system. They uttered a form of money which was negotiable only within the colony, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and this continued until the British intervened, during the period of King James II and his follower William, of William and Mary, to impose a monetary system on the United States.
There was an attempt to return to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was actually a credit system, under the initiative of Benjamin Franklin and his proposal for a paper currency. In the 1770s, Alexander Hamilton recognized a problem we had in the United States, which I cite here, again, because it's relevant to our current situation internationally, among nations internationally. Hamilton recognized, first of all, that the problem of the United States, which had just won its victory in a military struggle for independence, was bankrupt. Because each of the states, which had had separate state banking systems, of the separate colonies, were now in dire trouble because of the war debts they had incurred in defeating the British imperialists. So Hamilton said, "Well, there's no way that these states can deal with this problem."
We had a form of constitution in the Declaration of Independence, in which the principle was there, but we didn't have the mechanism. Well, Hamilton said: If we create a national bank, as a credit-based bank, we can create a national bank which will take over the backing and reorganization of these separate state-banking systems, under a national banking system. But he also specified that in order to do this, we had to go to our constitution then, which was the Declaration of Independence, and take the principle of that and apply it, in a form which would deal with this debt problem.
So what he did, and what they did, is they went to have a Constitutional Congress, and the Constitutional Congress gave us the U.S. Constitution, which provided that the United States would not be subject to foreign monetary systems, but would be an independent, national credit system, at that time, headed by a National Bank; that no money can be uttered under law, under Constitutional law in the United States at that time, except by permission of the Federal government. No other authority, higher than the Federal government itself can utter money. This money is uttered with the consent of the Congress, and the administration as executed by the Executive branch.
The same thing happened in the case of Abraham Lincoln's leadership of the revolt against the British Empire, called our Civil War. And the bankers would not allow money to be lent, except at high interest rates to the United States government. So, Abraham Lincoln went back to our Constitution, and issued what became known as "greenbacks": No money was allowed in circulation, except U.S. money, printed and guaranteed by the U.S. government. And through that means, we rescued our nation, not only won the war, but created the United States as the most advanced industrial power in the world, right in that period, by use of our credit system, to utilize the productive powers of labor and progress in an effective way.
So, as a result of the domination of the world by the British Empire, which has dominated the world through this entire period, except during the period of Roosevelt's Administration: The world has been dominated by an international monetary system, which in terms of the Mediterranean civilization, dates from the Peloponnesian War. There has never been a truly independent system, except for very brief intervals, in the entire history of Europe. And the entirety of the world, insofar as it's subjugated to the British Empire, has been subjugated to that condition, up to the present day!
What happened during the period of World War I, is that we had corrupt Presidents—who were really traitors in my view—Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who introduced the British system through establishing the Federal Reserve Bank, which was actually an intrusion; it was un-Constitutional, a money-creating facility outside the United States.
Under Franklin Roosevelt, this was somewhat controlled. But with the death of Roosevelt, we began down the wrong road, and then, with the break-up of the Bretton Woods system entirely, in 1968-1973, in that period, then we went to a world free-market system.
It is that world monetarist system, a so-called free-market system, which is now crashing. As long as we continue to accept the existence of that debt, which is the international monetarist debt, under this system, civilization, worldwide, is doomed. The only way that we'll get out of this mess, the only possibility for recovery, of any part of the world, is to cancel the present, international monetarist system. And have, instead, a system of nation-states, each sovereign, which declare a common participation in a system of national credit, the credit controlled as a sovereign matter of each state. And to combine these nations in a single system, by having a fixed-exchange-rate system among them. And we're talking about, essentially the goal of a fixed-exchange-rate system based on the idea of national credit of between 1.5 and 2% [interest rate]. Because at higher rates of interest, at higher rates of borrowing, you can not develop a balanced recovery of the world economy.
What we need now, today, as you know, we do not have the industry and agriculture development we need globally; we're losing it—losing it at a rapid rate. We need, largely, for nations to undertake long-term credit operations, in terms of infrastructure development, both rural and industrial, and use this kind of development as a stimulus for developing a full-spectrum economy. And that we must think in terms of 30- to 50-year long-term agreements on treaty agreements for development, each conducted by sovereign nations, but a sharing of credit from a common credit system—a fixed-exchange-rate credit system—among governments.
For example, let's take the case of Russia and China: China is in a hopeless situation. China was lured into the idea that it was going to have a world market, guaranteed by the United States and the British, especially the United States. And so, China expanded its economy, through an export economy; but they did that by pricing their goods so cheaply that China could not sustain its entire population on that export economy, because China was working at cheap-labor rates, way below the cost of the U.S. product. The U.S. product was superior, in productivity and other terms. But! China worked very cheap, and therefore, it expanded its market as the United States and Europe, dumped and shut down its industrial economy and shipped production to China.
The same thing happened in other countries, where cheap labor and cheap goods, where income was expanded, but not at rates sufficient to maintain the balanced development of these economies.
So China found itself in a position today, where it had a large economy, based largely on the market in the United States and Europe, and some other countries. But the key margin was the United States. And the United States was exporting its industry, deindustrializing itself—as Europe was—for this market.
When the market collapsed, China found itself with a budget which was based on the assumption that this global market was going to continue to exist, and expand—and suddenly, that market collapsed. And the collapse of that market means it will never come back. So, China is faced with a crisis.
Russia is faced with a different kind of crisis, but it's similar. It's faced with a crisis where it depended upon export of raw materials, particularly power—natural gas, petroleum, and so forth, this kind of thing. Suddenly, the market has collapsed, because the world market has collapsed. So Russia now has a major crisis.
India has less of a crisis, but it has also a very large, poor population. It's more stable, because it's less export-dependent, but it has a large, impoverished population.
So, what is needed is a global system of cooperation, among credit systems, in which we recognize what the world needs, in terms of physical levels of production, physical improvements in conditions of life. It must be sovereign, it must be done by sovereign nation-states. But there must be also a system of international credit-sharing, in support of long-term projects, and we're talking about essentially a 50-year perspective. Which means, you have to design, which can be done very quickly, a 50-year agreement on a credit organization among nation-states, in which we can integrate the aims and objectives of recovery of these nations.
Now, that would mean putting the system through bankruptcy. This would mean that most of the debt, which is currently outstanding, is financial speculative debt. Nations are being bled to death, by a system of speculative debt. Under bankruptcy reorganization, according to U.S. law, most of this debt that is found to be worthless, will be simply cancelled. And the amount of debt will be restricted to a stable banking system, under credit system rules. It's the only possible way.
As long as we try to demand, that the world economy be collapsed in order to pay a cancerously growing debt, there is no chance of recovery. Under the present rules, of the present system, and under the rules of globalization, there's no chance for the survival of civilization in any part of this planet, today! So we will have to do this, make this reform, because there's no other chance: Unless you want to collapse the civilization and want to go from 6.7 billion people on this planet, to less than 2 fairly quickly, you're going to do that kind of reform.
And that's what I've been presenting, and that's what I've been arguing for. I know time is on my side. But time is also against us: Because, if this process continues, the rate of death in this planet, from diseases and other effects, is going to wipe out a lot of the world's population. Whole nations will simply disappear from the map.
Or, if we do it, we'll survive. And it's the only chance.
And therefore, I'm sitting in that situation, where what I'm proposing will work; but if it's not done, then the whole planet's going into a dark age, worse than any on known record! And that's in the short term.
The political crises, as well as the present disease crisis, internationally, are a byproduct of this situation. Diseases, like this present flu epidemic, are diseases which are actually promoted by conditions for spread of disease. And therefore, these kinds of things hit, as they did, for example in the 14th Century in Europe. The population collapsed, what?—by 30%!—in a generation, in Europe, in the Dark Age of the 14th Century. It collapsed, following a collapse of the banking system of that period, which had brought down the entire economy of Europe. The result of that was chaos, and mass death.
All of these kinds of conditions, like the great flu epidemic of 1918, in the world, was a result of wartime-type conditions, especially centered in Europe, and in the fact of U.S. soldiers who had served in Europe, which brought this 1918 flu epidemic upon us. The present international flu epidemic is a symptom of the same kind of thing, and it's going to spread. It's spread, because the physical conditions of life, the physical conditions of sanitation, have reached the point that these diseases break out, not merely because the disease is being promoted, but the conditions to promote the disease and its variation has been that.
So, we're at that kind of point. And my concern is, if the United States will change its policy and enter into agreement with other nations, for such a change in policy, we can force through the kind of immediate reform, which parallels the reform designed by Alexander Hamilton, back during the period of the American Revolutionary War and following. It'll work. It's the only chance, the only chance, now.
Under the present system, there's no chance for civilization—we're going into a dark age. This is not a financial crisis. This is not a depression. It's not a recession. It's not a mere financial crisis. It's a breakdown crisis of the system! And if you look at the figures, on employment and production, in the United States and other countries, as in Europe, you look at the rate at which key industries are disappearing, you look at what's happening in agriculture: What you're seeing is a trend, now, well-established, which is going to reduce the world's population, in the direction of about 2 billion people, down from 6.7 right now.
So therefore, we have no choice, but to make this kind of reform. This kind of reform will work. The precedent exists for it, especially in the case of the United States example: When we did this, each time we did this and went back to our system, rather than the British system, we prospered. Each time we submitted to British influence, British bankers' influence over Wall Street, we went down. That's the lesson.
And our mission, as the United States, in my view, is the fact that we have in our experience, the understanding of a credit system, as opposed to a monetary one, where all European experience since the Peloponnesian War, to the present time, has been that of a monetary system. Get rid of the monetary system, use the principle of national sovereignty, of sovereign nation-states in cooperation for a fixed-exchange credit system, and we can recover.
This Week's News
U.S. Economic/Financial News
June 30 (EIRNS)—"President Obama's policies have driven the United States into bankruptcy," Lyndon LaRouche stated today, when asked about the budget crises facing most of the 50 states.
"The President is politically bankrupt. He had months in which to correct this situation, he did all the wrong things; all the things he shouldn't do, he did! Now, we've come to this point, of a pervasive bankruptcy of most of the states of the United States, a threatened breakdown of the living conditions of a people, the loss of our entire economy. This bum has made mistakes! He's now got to turn, he's got to abandon these policies, and recognize that history has proven him wrong! He's a fool, got to change his policies—now! He's been in too long."
June 30 was the end of the fiscal year in 46 states, and five of them—Arizona, California, Indiana, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania—had no budgets as of that date. is California is about to issue "IOUs" in lieu of payment, beginning July 2, for anything except state debts ($70 billion in bonds) and education, which are both protected by legislative mandate. Informed sources say that the IOUs have (secretly) already been printed, as fascist Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to allow the legislature to retain vital services in a partial budget extension. Arnie has said the pain has to be faced now.
Other states face similar disastrous consequences:
In Pennsylvania, the deadline for reaching a budget is midnight tonight, and not having a budget would be a repeat of its 1991 "suspended government" impasse, under far worse conditions of collapse. Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell is trying to squeeze $500 million more in budget cuts, and come up with new taxes. But there will be "payless paydays" beginning on July 17, unless funds are found; the Pennsylvania Hospital Association said today that 13,000 hospital workers will be axed if the cuts go through.
The Republican-controlled Senate passed a $27.3 billion budget in May, proposing 11-12% cuts in education, public welfare, libraries, parks, CHIP and other health programs, but no new taxes. The Senate plan was then voted down by the House Appropriations Committee. With declining revenues, the real shortfall for FY 2008-09 is $3.2 billion, and for FY 2009-10, another $3.2 billion. Rendell announced today that 10 banks and credit unions will give "bridge loans" to "creditworthy" state employees! But, will they have jobs? The mayors of Reading, Lancaster, York, Easton, and Bethlehem said that their cities will wind up under state receivership soon, unless they are granted the power to impose a 1% local sales tax, or other relief.
In Indiana, a last-minute budget was passed on the 30th, after two days of debate. If that had failed, as it had since June 11, some 31,000 state workers would have been put out of work at midnight, and several departments, such as Motor Vehicles, closed down. Indiana will probably dip heavily into its $1.2 billion surplus to cover expenses. The budget shortfall is over $1 billion, and revenues continue to fall.
In Arizona, lawmakers were still grappling with how to cover a $3 billion shortfall.
There has never been such a large collective deficit in the U.S. states—a total of $121 billion this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
June 28 (EIRNS)—Thirty of the United States' state-run unemployment insurance funds will run out of money during 2010, reports Rick McHugh of the National Employment Law Project. McHugh notes that the states could borrow an estimated $17 billion from the U.S. Treasury to keep the unemployment funds solvent; the other alternative is that the U.S. government would have to provide the money.
So far this year, 15 states' funds ran out of money, even with the so-called stimulus plan extending $7 billion for unemployment insurance. At the start of 2009, there were 3 million Americans who were receiving unemployment benefits; that number has doubled in five months.
Global Economic News
July 1 (EIRNS)—The Gross Domestic Product of Turkey collapsed by 13.8% for the first quarter over that of last year. This is the steepest decline since 1945, according to today's Zaman. The drop included 24.4% in wholesale and retail trade; 18.9% in the construction sector and 18.5% in manufacturing. This can be attributed to the nearly 40% collapse of Turkey's exports.
Zaman comments that these figures will renew pressure on the government to sign a new agreement with the International Monetary Fund, which has been under negotiation for months: The Turkish government is resisting a new agreement, because of the conditionalities the IMF is demanding, including major budget cuts and cuts in government investment in infrastructure.
July 3 (EIRNS)—One of the many undiscussed provisions of the Carbon Cap-and-Trade bill recently rammed through the U.S. House of Representatives, is the imposion of a tax, or tariff, on imports from countries that don't meet the mandated carbon standards.
China criticizes the carbon tariff proposals as inconsistent with World Trade Organization rules, claiming it is de facto protectionism in the name of environmental protection, according to today's People's Daily.
Yao Jian, spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, said in a statement today that China strongly opposes the proposal, which he warned could trigger trade war.
People's Daily writes: "The carbon tariff proposal is not in compliance with the principle of 'common but differentiated responsibilities' between developed countries and developing countries defined by the Kyoto Protocol. Thus the tariff will 'severely impair the interest of developing countries,' said Yao."
July 3 (EIRNS)—The International Monetary Fund issued bonds for the first time in history today, uttering currency outside government control, as decided at the G20 meeting in London in April. The IMF issued Special Drawing Rights-denominated bonds which were purchased by China, Russia, India, and Brazil. China requested $50 billion, and the others, $10 billion each. SDRs are a form of international currency de facto replacing the dollar. Once a country applies for SDRs, the loan will be denominated in a national currency. For instance, if the country wants U.S. dollars, its SDR account is debited, and America's SDR account is credited. The same goes for other national or regional currencies, such as the euro. So, the day when China or any other BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) country wants to cash its bonds, it can do so in currencies other than the dollar.
At the same time, the bonds are generating a new market, i.e., they are traded at no less and no more than sovereign state bonds. This means they have a price tag, and they are subject to derivatives trading. This gives the British the ability to manipulate the price of the SDR as against the dollar and other national currencies.
We now have the beginning of a shift from a dollar-based system to an entirely supranational system—a system which will never work, said Lyndon LaRouche in his June 27 webcast.
United States News Digest
July 3 (EIRNS)—Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) defended Rep. Carolyn Maloney's right to take on State Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in the race for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat previously held by Hillary Clinton, and lashed out anew at President Obama for butting into New York's Democratic primary. According to the Daily News, Rangel said, "I really cannot say anything negative about a senior member who wants to run and whose polls, at this point in time, appear to be in her favor. Nobody can challenge that she's not a hardworking member of Congress. She is certainly one of our most active members."
In May, Obama phoned Rep. Steve Israel, who is from Long Island, to nudge him away from a challenge to Gillibrand, a move that also prompted Rangel to criticize the President. Last month, Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said publicly that Obama favored Gillibrand. "I really don't understand why President Obama got involved in our primary," Rangel said. "I don't want to use the word wrong, but it doesn't seem like the astute political thing to do." Former President Bill Clinton said yesterday that he would not take sides. Clinton appeared at a fundraiser for Gillibrand earlier this year, and is scheduled to appear at a fundraiser for Maloney on July 20.
Sources in the Democratic Party leadership have reported that the White House is out to bust up any strong party grouping, even the Daley machine in Chicago and the Cuomo apparatus in New York, as a way of securing loyalty to Narcissist in Chief Obama.
July 3 (EIRNS)—President Obama conducted a conference call with the top Democrats in Congress yesterday, insisting that both houses of Congress pass health-care legislation this month, Politico reports.
Reflecting the White House fear that any discussion of details of the plans will kill any hopes of passage, one source stated: "Obama made a very firm pitch that they need to get the bills out of the House and Senate and we'll worry about the details in September." "No one else on the White House side spoke," said another source. "This was an Obama phone call."
Obama is demanding suppression of advertising from organizations that are critical of his program, and he indicated that he is already working to curtail them, a source told Politico.
On the call were Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer, and key committee chairmen Max Baucus and Chris Dodd from the Senate, and Henry Waxman, Charles Rangel, and George Miller from the House.
July 2 (EIRNS)—Among the people happiest to be liberated from the Bush Administration, were liberal activists who had fought that Administration's creeping police state, in the courts and in their writings. With the advent of the Obama Administration, they thought, there would surely be a change in that arena. However, since shortly after Obama's inauguration, a series of policy positions, perhaps beginning with Obama's decision not to examine, let alone prosecute, the national security actions of the Bush Administration, has led many of these liberals to suspect a case of "old wine in new bottles."
The New York Times reported today that "To critics, Obama's terror policy looks a lot like Bush's." Obama officials cited in the article point out that the difference is, that Bush operated on the basis of an expanded notion of his authority, while Obama relies on Congressional statutes. Critics say this is a legalistic dodge, and both approaches trample on individual rights.
A central matter causing concern is Obama's May 21 speech at the National Archives, while asserting the importance of American values not being jettisoned in the pursuit of security, nevertheless laid out the possibility of "indefinite detention" of Guantanamo prisoners who cannot be given a trial (notably because evidence against them was unconstitutionally obtained), but are too dangerous to be released, because they would likely return to battle against the U.S.
Causing further disquiet, is that the Executive Orders issued by Obama on Inauguration Day concern only the Guantanamo detainees and one "al-Qaeda affiliate" held inside the United States. A second major "war on terror" detention facility, the U.S. base at Bagram in Afghanistan, remains untouched, along with lesser-known such facilities; the Administration has endorsed the Bush position that those detainees have no rights. (It took a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court during the Bush Administration, for Guantanamo detainees to obtain the constitutional right of habeas corpus, for court hearings on whether their detention was proper.)
June 30 (EIRNS)—Today in Washington, D.C., at the offices of one of the world's largest HMOs, UnitedHealth Group, a report was issued on how to kill off selected segments of Americans. The author is Simon Stevens, vice president for elderly "managed care" at UnitedHealth, and formerly British Prime Minister Tony Blair's top health advisor (1997-2004). Under Blair and Stevens, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) was set up in Britain (1999), to decree Hitler-type rules on who would get medical treatment and who would die.
EIR reporter Carl Osgood was refused entrance at today's "for the media" event. EIR, its contributing editor Lyndon LaRouche, and his political action committee, LaRouchePAC, have exposed the Nazi "useless eaters" pedigree of NICE and the Tony Blair crowd. The exclusion of EIR reflects how fierce the battleground in Washington, D.C. is at this time.
UnitedHealth is well positioned to enforce care cuts and death for seniors and the poor. It acts as the "supplemental" insurer for one of every five Medicare enrollees. It is the largest Medicare health plan in the United States, thanks to a public/private partnership between Medicare and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), the biggest voluntary member organization in the world (40 million). UnitedHealth is also the largest Medicaid health plan (for the poor), operating in 22 states and the District of Columbia.
The new report is titled, "Health Care Cost Containment How Technology Can Cut Red Tape and Simplify Health Care Administration." It lists 12 "Options," by which it states that $332 billion can be cut out of U.S. health expenditures on "administration," over 2010-19. The list includes proposals based on having a nationwide Big Brother "Electric Data Interchange," combined with automated cards for the patient, so that "at the point of service," medical treatment or diagnostic procedures can be easily approved or denied. The List of Options calls for "new system-wide standards and processes," to determine how much hospitals, doctors, and others will or won't be paid, based on how they obey new rules of treatment.
This report is the second after Stevens delivered one on May 27 on cost cutting, published by the UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform & Modernization, which Stevens heads (and founded in January 2009), to lead the charge in the United States for the British "kill 'em off" campaign.
Ibero-American News Digest
June 30 (EIRNS)—American statesman Lyndon LaRouche today asked if President Barack Obama's support for last week's attempted coup d'état by former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, is a reflection of Obama's own plans to try something similar in the United States.
"All indications are that that is the case," LaRouche asserted. "Obama is betraying the mentality of a fascist dictator. Is he headed for a dictatorship? The pattern points in that direction. He is driving feverishly to impose Nazi health reforms on the U.S. He is hell-bent on the worst kind of environmentalist cap-and-trade legislation. And his London-dictated economic policies have driven the United States, and all its 50 states, into bankruptcy. Just look at the horror-show that is taking place in California."
"Is Obama sympathetic to what Zelaya tried to do because the foreign forces behind Obama are headed for an attempted coup against the United States Constitution?" LaRouche asked.
LaRouche pointed to the essential facts in the Honduran case. Then-President Zelaya attempted to organize a June 28 referendum to call a constituent assembly, which in turn was to modify the Honduran Constitution to allow him to run for reelection. But such referenda are unconstitutional in Honduras, and the Supreme Court and Congress both rejected the Zelaya initiative on those grounds. Zelaya attempted to proceed by force regardless, and ordered the army to distribute ballots, and then cashiered the head of the armed forces when he refused to carry out the unconstitutional order.
The Supreme Court then reinstated the fired general; the armed forced arrested Zelaya hours before the illegal referendum was scheduled to begin, and put him on an airplane to neighboring Costa Rica; and the Congress named its president Roberto Micheletti as acting President, until new elections could be held.
"They did the right thing," LaRouche commented. "The guy's trying to make himself a dictator through the referendum, and he had somebody behind him, some other outside force. And the people in his government caught onto him, and what he was up to."
LaRouche continued: "The guy was making a coup against his own Constitution. His own government and his own Supreme Court condemned him for crimes against the Constitution. And now many of the governments in the region, and Obama, are lined up to defend him. These guys are upset because they are afraid of their own people—including the President of Venezuela. Are these governments going to be stooges for Obama when he does the same thing in the United States?"
July 5 (EIRNS)—The Honduran crisis escalated dramatically over the weekend of July 4-5, as London-steered "Bolivarian" forces—emboldened by President Obama's irresponsible, unqualified support for ousted President Manuel Zelaya earlier this week—deployed to reinstate Zelaya in office by force. On the evening of July 5, Zelaya took off from the U.S. with the intention of landing in Honduras, in a jet provided by the Chávez government of Venezuela and piloted by a "Bolivarian captain," accompanied by the current president of the UN General Assembly, former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel D'Escotto. The London-run "leftist" governments of Venezuela and Nicaragua have both threatened military action to reinstate their ally, Zelaya.
The new Honduran government of Roberto Micheletti warned that the plane carrying Zelaya would not be allowed to land, and it placed military vehicles on the runway. Zelaya's plane overflew the airport and the capital city, realized it would be unable to land, and then proceeded to neighboring Nicaragua. Honduran Foreign Minister Ernesto Ortez had earlier announced that there were Nicaraguan troop movements along its border with Honduras.
On July 4, the Organization of American States (OAS) voted 33-0 to suspend Honduras from membership—the first time the OAS has taken such a move since the 1962 suspension of Cuba, which all of the nations of Ibero-America are now opposed to. Lyndon LaRouche commented today that this is quite an embarrassment for the region's governments, but that "some nations in Ibero-America seem to like drug money."
LaRouche also noted that the deposed Zelaya regime "had George Soros written all over it," a reference to Zelaya's Oct. 13, 2008 public endorsement of the Soros-led drive to legalize drugs. It is well documented that Soros is an asset of imperial British financial interests.
The U.S. State Department, OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, and others had all urged Zelaya not to try to return to Honduras at this time, as bloodshed could result. But the ousted President seems intent on playing his part in London's script for regional violence, and possibly war.
July 5 (EIRNS)—Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, on behalf of the Honduran Bishops Conference, issued a statement on July 4, which took sharp issue with the way the OAS was handling the crisis, reporting that "all Honduran Democratic Institutions are operating and in place ... [including] all three branches of the State: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial are within democratic legal boundaries, according to the Constitution of the Republic of Honduras."
Cardinal Rodríguez—a powerful figure in Catholic Church circles internationally, who was widely considered as "papabile" during the recent papal succession—further explained that Zelaya had violated Article 239 of the Constitution, which says that anyone calling for a referendum, as Zelaya repeatedly did, "shall immediately cease performing the functions of his post," and that "therefore the mentioned person, at the moment of his arrest, was no longer performing the duties of the Republic's Presidency."
Rodríguez demanded that the OAS "pay attention to all previous events occurring outside legality in Honduras," a reference to Zelaya's unconstitutional activities, adding that "the Honduran people are also asking why you have not condemned the belligerent threats against our country," meaning the Venezuelan and Nicaraguan calls for military action.
He concluded by urging "my friend José Manuel Zelaya ... to reflect before taking an impetuous action. Your return at this point could result in a bloodbath.... Please think carefully before you take any steps, before it is too late."
July 3 (EIRNS)—The Argentine Congress will host an international conference Aug. 6-7, to push Dope, Inc.'s agenda of drug legalization. The conference is formally sponsored by central elements of what Lyndon LaRouche has denounced as "Anglo-Dutch Liberal Imperialism": the British Embassy, the Dutch Embassy, the Open Society Institute of George Soros, and the Soros-sponsored Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy.
One panel is titled "International Panorama of Reform of Drug Policy: Openings and Challenges for the Future"; another will discuss legislative reforms already underway in Ibero-America—including drug decriminalization legislation passed by the congresses of Argentina and Mexico, but not yet signed into law by Argentina's President Kirchner and Mexican President Calderón. Both heads of state have so far avoided making a final decision on the legislation, but both are expected to do so after their respective mid-term elections (June 27 in Argentina, July 5 in Mexico).
Speakers at the conference include Martin Jelsma (Dutch head of the Transnational Institute's Drugs and Democracy project, a Soros front); Hugo Cabieses of Peru (another Soros flunky and legalization promoter); Eugenio Zaffaroni (Argentine Supreme Court justice and legalization advocate); Anibal Fernández (Argentine Justice Minister and drug legalization champion); and many others.
Western European News Digest
June 30 (EIRNS)—The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany published its 150-page ruling on the Lisbon Treaty today, giving the treaty its approval, but attaching numerous conditions, some of which pose the question as to why the court did not throw it out altogether.
This leaves room for new legal moves against the treaty, since plaintiffs can take to court whatever resolutions the parliament intends to pass.
The Presidents of Poland and the Czech Republic have reiterated that their final signature under their nations' approval of the treaty depends on the result of the second Irish referendum on Oct. 2. And Czech President Vaclav Klaus added that, whatever happens in the coming weeks, he will definitely be the "last of all heads of state in the EU to sign that treaty," giving no hint when that time would arrive.
July 2 (EIRNS)—"Cases are doubling every week, and on this trend we could see over 100,000 [swine flu] cases per day by the end of August," British Health Secretary Andy Burnham told the House of Commons today.
Burnham had earlier covered up the spread of the new flu in Britain, and enraged experts in the World Health Organization and elsewhere for lying about the number of cases and rates of spread.
Burnham's extrapolation of rates has no particular scientific validity; however, it is not impossible that the forecast may prove true.
June 30 (EIRNS)—The three most important religious leaders in Britain published an open letter on June 29, denouncing a proposed amendment which would, in effect, legalize assisted suicide, by protecting anyone who "helps" arrange an assisted suicide in Switzerland, or other places where it is legal. The Church of England's Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, and Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks jointly signed a letter stating that the terminally ill "need care and protection—not help in committing suicide."
A group of senior members of the House of Lords has also spoken out against the amendment.
The amendment is sponsored by Lord Falconer, who was Tony Blair's Lord Chancellor, and Baroness Jay, a long-time New Labour health reformer.
June 30 (EIRNS)—The courts of Zurich have just made two decisions that benefit the euthanasia movement. The district court ruled that the association with the misleading name "Dignitas" can open a euthanasia clinic in a commercial zone just north of the city, since it is in compliance with the commercial laws of Switzerland. And the municipal administration of Zurich has signed a contract with "Exit," another such association, regulating conditions for the practice of euthanasia. Each association has already killed hundreds of human beings, if not more.
Protesting these decisions and reiterating his call for a ban on such euthanasia practices, former Swiss President Pascal Couchepin took to the "10 to 10" primetime news-and-background TV program last night, stating that he would have banned "Exit" right away, rather than signing contracts with it.
PARIS, June 28 (EIRNS)—The French Association of Emergency Physicians (AMUF) launched a petition drive on June 10, declaring they had "entered into resistance" and would refuse to apply President Nicolas Sarkozy's latest health-care law, which is designed to empower managers as financial dictators of hospitals, in charge of deciding who will be allowed to get medical treatment, and who will be left to die. The call is entirely congruent with Lyndon LaRouche's attacks against U.S. President Obama's Nazi-like health-care "reform" plans. The physicians explicitly invoke the CNR, the French cross-party resistance organization that fought the Nazis.
June 30 (EIRNS)—In a television interview on June 28, Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti exposed London-steered requests that the Italian government be replaced with a "technical" Cabinet, because of alleged sex scandals involving Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. "A technical government would last no longer than a yogurt," Tremonti said. The name circulating to lead such a technical government is Financial Stability Board head Mario Draghi, an asset of the City of London.
Tremonti also rejected calls for "pension reform," coming from the same quarters, who are keen on saving government funds to bail out the banks. "Those who think they can steal workers' money to use it for other purposes, should wipe this from their mind," Tremonti said.
Tremonti confirmed that the Chinese Communist Party has invited him to deliver a lecture to its cadre school on the global economic crisis. "I am very proud of this invitation," Tremonti said, adding that the decision to invite him, a politician, and not an economist, is significant.
July 1 (EIRNS)—A former collaborator of the late Italian entrepreneur and nationalist leader Enrico Mattei, Benito Livigni, started a series of presentations of his new book, I predatori dell'oro nero e della finanza speculativa (The Predators of Black Gold and Speculative Finance), with conferences in Palermo, his native city. The book has three chapters either on or by LaRouche and the LaRouche movement. At the first event in a bookstore, Livigni reported "large curiosity" in the audience, especially on the "destruction of the national economy" as described by LaRouche and EIR. Livigni put his collaboration with LaRouche up front, as well as the New Bretton Woods solution to the global financial-economic collapse.
June 30 (EIRNS)—Mayors of numerous German municipalities in the Wuppertal region protested today in front of the Bundestag building in Berlin, against the effects of the financial crisis, and the inaction of the government. They posed there as "beggars," to illustrate the precarious situation of their municipalities, which are watching their tax-revenue base crumble with the wave of corporate defaults and of unemployment. Municipal treasurers report that they feel they have to beg for a couple of euros, to keep basic urban functions intact.
In their region, which has a population of about 2 million, mayors pointed out that 40 municipalities are so over-indebted that they are basically owned by the banks. It is said that about half the cities in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous, with a population of 17 million, are in a similar situation.
June 30 (EIRNS)— The British monarchy's demand for increased public funding as the British economy evaporates—it was officially acknowledged today that the economy is shrinking at the fastest rate in 50 years—could lead to a "financial showdown with the Treasury," the Times of London reports today. This is another sign of the dog-eat-dog infighting among those running the British empire today. While the amounts involved are minor in the context of the world financial bubble, certain groups in Britain appear bent on giving the Queen a hard time.
Buckingham Palace is calling for an increase in the funding granted by Parliament for the first time in 20 years, demands which are likely to "pitch the palace into political controversy," said the Times.
Russia and the CIS News Digest
June 22 (EIRNS)—Both announced policies and current trends show that Russia's Presidency is still confused and disoriented, respecting the nature of the general breakdown-crisis of the planet. As long as Russia fails to grasp the British Empire's top-down direction of both the policies of the Obama Administration, and the fact that the world financial situation is presently hopeless for the short term, it cannot see the necessity for the alternative presented by Lyndon LaRouche to be adopted, instead, very soon.
At present, the world as a whole is gripped by a general breakdown-crisis of a type similar to that which Europe experienced in the 14th-Century "New Dark Age," but this time on a global, rather than regional scale. Admittedly, President Obama is, currently, his own worst enemy on this account; but, it must not be presumed that ignoring the fact that Obama is a British puppet will be helpful to Russia, or any other nation. A few recent developments directly affecting Russia's situation, illustrate the deadly trend in current developments:
Even while Russia's government leaders keep on their dangerously misguided course of proposing to undermine the role of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency, their domestic "anti-crisis" policies are only serving to preside over the collapse of the national economy. Russian industrial output contracted even faster in May—by 17.1%—than it had in April, the state statistics agency Rosstat announced June 16. This is the seventh straight month of collapse; overall, industrial production has fallen 15.4% from a year ago. Capital investment has fallen over 23% from a year ago, although it increased, by 11%, compared to April.
Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina had to report that the national economy had shrunk by an annualized rate of 9.8% in the first three months of 2009, which is the worst in 15 years—that is, since the depths of the shock therapy destruction of Russia's economy.
An indicator of the disaster, is that on June 17, Vladimir Yakunin, president of the huge Russian Railways complex, met with representatives of its labor organizations, the 17 national railroads, and the State Duma, to announce that 53,700 employees will be made redundant this year through voluntary retirement and other measures. These job losses are minimal, Yakunin said. "From an economic point of view, at the present time we have to lay off 180,000 workers," Yakunin was quoted by Progressive Railroading. "But the board has taken a strategic decision to preserve the workforce as much as possible, avoid mass redundancies so as to enter the post-crisis period, when traffic will increase, with the necessary staff." Russian Railways is the biggest single employer in Russia, with a workforce of 1.2 million. On June 5, Yakunin had said that the Railways carried 20% less freight in May than a year ago. This actually was an improvement: Freight volumes were down 25%-33% earlier this year.
Russian manufacturing overall contracted by 23.7%, with the automobile industry hit the hardest. There, production contracted by almost 64%, and sales of cars and light passenger vehicles were down 58%. Cement production, a key indicator of construction, was down almost 25% from a year ago. Natural gas production fell 28.7% due to the evaporation of the European market. Gas exports to nations outside the former Soviet Union (the CIS nations) had already fallen by 56.7% in the first three months, to 26.4 billion cubic meters, while exports to the CIS were down 37.4%. Coal output was down 11.7%
At a meeting of the Russian government regional development commission in Barnaul on June 19, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was presenting his government's second anti-crisis program, told regional governors that budget revenues had fallen 5% in the first three months, and as much as 15% in some regions.
Unemployment had improved, but only very slightly, and this is a seasonal factor, Putin said. The official rate is now 9.9%, down from 10.2% in April; wages are shrinking for those who do have jobs.
July 1 (EIRNS)—On a conference call today, advisors to President Obama gave an indication of the tone of the meetings the President was to hold while in Moscow the week of July 6. In addition to meeting President Dmitri Medvedev, he will have a separate meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, probably concentrating on the energy question. Obama will also meet with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachov, business leaders, and members of the press.
This second day of meetings is intended to "reset" relations with "Russian civil society." "The idea here is that this is not 1974, this is not just where we go where we do an arms control agreement with the Soviets," said Mike McFaul, Senior NSC Advisor on Eurasian Affairs, "but that we have a multi-dimensional relationship with the Russian government and with the Russian people. And that's what we're going to try to begin to establish in this first substantive discussion that we have with the Russian government, and then to follow up with that with different parts of Russian society." Obama will give a speech at Moscow's New Economic School.
In response to a question on NATO expansion and missile defense, McFaul said that the President's visit was not meant to "reassure" the Russian leaders that these were not going forward. "The door is open" for these countries, he said, and Vice President Joe Biden would be going to Ukraine and Georgia a week later to discuss that issue with them.
On the planned Polish missile defense installations, McFaul said, "With regard to missile defense, as you know, we have a review that's underway right now. It's a congressionally mandated review, but we'd be doing it anyway, because we're reviewing all policies. And the way I understand that review, we want to enhance missile defense in Europe and around the world as it relates to real threats. And by 'real threats,' I mean countries like Iran, and not Russia. But we also have to do it in ways to make sure that it works and it's affordable, as the President has said many times before.
"We believe that when you think about enhancing missile defense in that part of the world, that Russia could play a very—a role that would enhance their security, as well," McFaul said. "And when we're in Moscow, we're going to talk in those terms, not abandoning the third site in order to do a deal with Russia. That is a formulation we just don't use at all. But we want to enhance European missile defense.
"We're going to define our national interests, and by that I also mean the interests of our allies in Europe with reference to these two particular questions," he said. "We're going to talk about them very frankly as we did in April when we first met with President Medvedev. And then we're going to see if there are ways that we can have Russia cooperate on those things that we define as our national interests."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that she will not be travelling with the President, ostensibly because of her convalescing from a broken elbow, but will send someone from the State Department to represent her.
Southwest Asia News Digest
July 5 (EIRNS)—Newly surfaced documents from the files of the 9/11 Commission add evidence of the direct role of Saudi Arabia's intelligence services in the 9/11 attacks. One document confirms that a Saudi intelligence officer, Omar al-Bayoumi, was working closely with two West Coast-based 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. The document, an April 23, 2004 Commission "Memorandum for the Record," summarizes an interview that Commission staffers Quinn John Tamm, Jr. and Dietrich Snell had with an unnamed FBI informant in the San Diego area, and who housed the two hijackers during much of 2000.
The Commission document reads, in part: "Dr. X noted that Omar al-Bayoumi also visited al-Hazmi at his house. Dr. X knew al-Bayoumi as a Saudi national who Dr. X met at the ICSD [Islamic Center of San Diego]. Al-Bayoumi stated to Dr. X when he visited, that 'I referred them [al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar] to you.' Dr. X restated that this was not the case and that he met the two in the hallway of the ICSD after the Friday prayer service."
The memo continues: "Al-Hazmi did not like al-Bayoumi and told Dr. X that al-Bayoumi was an 'agent for the Saudis.' Al-Hazmi complained to Dr. X that al-Bayoumi videotaped people associated with the ICSD constantly. Dr. X noted that that was his experience when he attended events at the ICSD. Dr. X said that al-Bayoumi always had his videotape recorder and sought comment to the open mike on the videotape recorder. Dr. X stated that 'I have heard that al-Bayoumi is an agent [of the Saudis].'"
What the document does not report, is that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, and his wife, Princess Haifa, paid $50-72,000 to al-Bayoumi, who passed some of the money to al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. Princess Haifa is the sister of Prince Turki bin Faisal, who was head of Saudi intelligence at the time of the 9/11 attacks. He resigned, suddenly, soon after Sept. 11, 2001.
The fact that the two hijackers were living in the home of an FBI informant, who told the FBI that the two men were living with him, is another volatile aspect of the 9/11 case that has been suppressed. The fact that then-FBI Director Louis Freeh is now the attorney representing Prince Bandar in the BAE bribery case, is of direct relevance to the ongoing probe into 9/11.
July 5 (EIRNS)—The internal power struggle in Iran escalated over the July 4-5 weekend, further underscoring the wisdom of Lyndon LaRouche's call, at a recent Washington, D.C. event, for the United States to "butt out, and not engage in the kind of interference that the British are attempting."
On July 4, a prominent organization of Shi'ite clerics, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom, issued a statement challenging the Guardian Council and Supreme Leader Khamenei, and demanding a further probe into allegations of massive vote fraud. The statement, a signal of a significant rift between the most prestigious group of Shi'ite clerics—founded in the 1980s by Ayatollah Khomeini—and the current Supreme Leader and President Ahmadinejad, underscores that the internal struggle is continuing, even as street demonstrations have been, for the moment, largely curtailed, through arrests and a massive deployment of security forces.
According to the July 5 New York Times, Mir Hussein Mousavi, the leading reform candidate for President, met with the clerics group ten days ago, but the July 4 posting by the Association came after a government newspaper Kayhan, editorially accused Mousavi, as well as the former Speaker of the Majlis and reform Presidential candidate Medhi Karroubi, and former President Khatami, of being "foreign agents," and called for a public trial.
The Association's statement also came out the same day that Mousavi posted a 24-page dossier on alleged acts of vote fraud by Ahmadinejad backers. The dossier cited the printing of 20 million additional ballots, and accused both the Interior Minister, Sadegh Mahsouli, and the head of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, of rigging the election. Mahsouli was an Ahmadinejad appointee and backer of his reelection; Jannati and five other members of the 12-member Guardian Council, which certified the election results, endorsed Ahmadinejad in advance of the elections—a violation of election laws.
This conflict is but a signal of intense behind-the-scenes maneuvering, according to a senior U.S. intelligence source closely monitoring the events. In addition to the Association statement and the Mousavi dossier, Ayatollah Rafsanjani met, in the past few days, with the families of opposition leaders who have been jailed for their role in the protest demonstrations, indicating that another powerful cleric has sided with the opposition.
The U.S. intelligence source agreed with LaRouche's warning that the United States should stay out of the conflict, and allow the internal dynamics to play out. The source agreed that there is little that the United States could or should do, to affect the internal Iranian situation, and noted that President Obama had sent a letter to the Supreme Leader one month before the elections, which clearly anticipated an Ahmadinejad victory, and presented proposals for high-level talks between the two nations.
In a discussion in Washington, D.C., on July 1, LaRouche called for the U.S. government to do "as little as possible. Don't meddle." He noted that Iran has been going through a process of change throughout the postwar period, citing the Mossadegh movement of the 1950s, and the Islamic Revolution of the late 1970s. "Now, again, Iran is going through a process of change." LaRouche called on the U.S. to "leave it alone," and added that the United States should "adopt a policy of cooperation, whatever the outcome. Do not, attempt to interfere and manage the internal process in Iran, like the British have been doing, ever since Sykes-Picot, and continue to do up to this moment."
July 4 (EIRNS)—Yukiya Amano, who in December, had won the IAEA Board's vote to replace Mohamad ElBaradei as director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, may not live up to British imperial expectations. Asked during his first press conference about Iran's intention to develop nuclear weapons, Amano responded: "I don't see any evidence in IAEA official documents about that." Amano was the preferred candidate of the United States and Britain, and he is said to be oriented more to "non-proliferation" than to supporting the spread of peaceful nuclear energy, as was his South African opponent Adbul Samad Minty.
July 1 (EIRNS)—Her Majesty's oil company is back in Iraq after 40 years. BP (formerly British Petroleum) won rights to develop Iraq's largest oil field in a joint venture with China's CNPC and the Iraqi state-owned South Oil company. The contract is for the Rumaila field, with reserves of 18 billion barrels, which is about one-sixth of Iraq's 115 billion barrels in reserves.
BP, originally known as Anglo Persian Oil, was created on the initiative of Winston Churchill to exploit the oil of Persia for the benefit of the British Imperial Navy. It first entered Iraq when Iraq was the British Empire's prize in the Sykes-Picot Agreement that divided the Arab part of the Ottoman Empire between Great Britain and France. It became the leading company, over the Turkish Petroleum Company, which later become the Iraq Petroleum company. The latter was a consortium along with Royal Dutch Shell; the French CFP which later became Total; and Standard Oil which later became Esso and then Exxon; and Calouste Gulbenkian, a Turkish-Armenian fixer.
In an editorial, the Financial Times applauds the deal under the title, "Back to the Future." It writes, "BP is back in Iraq. The oil major that started life as the Anglo Persian Oil company a century ago is looking again to the Middle East, home to about two-thirds of the world's proven oil resources...."
The offer by BP was the only one accepted by Iraq in a tender auction that involved seven oil fields and one gas field. The terms for which BP signed were rejected by other companies. The same terms were rejected by BP for smaller fields. The Financial Times writes that BP hopes to get access to future oil reserves through this deal.
July 2 (EIRNS)—Turkey has announced plans to resume construction on a $1.5 billion dam project that had been blocked by foreign financiers, because of alleged environmental flaws, along with 150 other World Bank conditions, with which it was claimed that the project failed to comply.
Turkish Environment Minister Veysel Eroglu said that, as far as Turkey is concerned, these conditions have been met and the project will go ahead soon. The project is key to the $29 billion South Eastern Anatolia Project, which seeks to develop the hard-pressed region of southeast Turkey, where the Kurdish insurgency is active. This dam will produce 1,200 MW of electricity and water for irrigation.
The Turkish economy has been hit hard by the collapse, and the government is committed to moving ahead on infrastructure projects crucial for the country.
Asia News Digest
July 1 (EIRNS)—Located in the strategic Central Asia region, bordering Afghanistan and China, Tajikistan, a nation of 7 million people, has remained a victim of the British-Saudi design to keep the area unstable and violent. In the 1990s, Tajikistan underwent a civil war which almost broke the country up.
Particularly since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to oust the Taliban regime, a good part of the opium produced in Afghanistan, as well as heroin, passes through Tajikistan to Russia, and beyond. The process has criminalized Tajik society and has become a major source of income for the terrorist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which wants to eliminate all Central Asian nations and make the area part of an Islamic Caliphate. The IMU is funded by drugs and Saudi Arabia, but its "peaceful" arm, Hizb ut-Tahrir, is headquartered in Britain.
In addition to the drug epidemic unleashed to weaken all of Central Asia, Tajikistan is a perpetually food-short nation. Only 5% to 6% of its land is arable, and most of that arable land grows cotton. Over the years, Tajikistan survived on remittances sent from Russia by almost a million Tajik migrant workers. At one point in recent years, 54% of its GDP was coming from such remittances. Now that the Russian economy is tanking, Tajik migrants are coming back home in the midst of abject poverty and violence.
July 2 (EIRNS)—Led by Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson (USMC), about 4,000 U.S. Marines, as well as 650 Afghan National Army troops, launched what is termed a "massive ground offensive," Operation Khanjar (Operation Strike of the Sword), into the Helmand River Valley, a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan. According to Nicholson, Operation Khanjar is different from the previous anti-Taliban assaults because of the "massive size of the force" and its speed. The U.S. troops entered Helmand province after the situation had deteriorated while some 8,000 British troops were stationed there for the past four years. During this period, opium production in the area ballooned, and the Taliban took hold of almost the entire area.
Last year, an American Marine Expeditionary Unit of 2,400 men secured a small, but critical, area in the district of Garmser in southern Helmand, choking off Taliban supply routes from the Pakistani border, while reopening the town for commerce. The operation had a crippling effect on Taliban forces operating in neighboring Uruzgan Province.
The objective of Khanjar is to push out the Taliban, and destroy the opium and heroin stocks built up by the drug traffickers, but not the opium fields. Most of the opium in Helmand has already been harvested.
The mood of the Afghan people has tipped toward revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan, presenting American forces with an even harder job than expected in reversing military losses to the Taliban. The southern provinces have suffered the worst civilian casualties since NATO's deployment to the region began in 2006. Thousands of people have already been displaced by fighting and taken refuge in the towns.
Pakistan's army said it had moved troops from elsewhere on its side of the Afghan border to the stretch opposite Helmand, to try to stop militants from fleeing into Pakistan. It gave no more details, but U.S. and Pakistani officials have expressed concern that stepped-up operations in southern Afghanistan could push the insurgents across the border.
June 2 (EIRNS)—The Philippines press and political circles are buzzing with the news from Honduras (see Ibero-American Digest), as the circumstances of the two nations are nearly identical: an incumbent President running up against constitutional limits on power, moving brazenly to scrap the Constitution and ram through new laws through illegal means, in order to stay in power. Philippines President Gloria Arroyo has used her control of the House of Representatives to pass a bill to constitute itself as a Constitutional Assembly, with the power to change the Constitution. This ignores the Senate, which, under the Philippines' Presidential system, must also approve any Constitutional changes, and the Senate is strongly opposed to the effort.
Everywhere in the Philippines today, one hears the cry: Why isn't our military defending the Constitution as did the Honduran military?
Arroyo has called on the House to convene a Constitutional Assembly soon after her State of the Nation address on July 27, flaunting the illegality in the face of opposition from the Senate, the military, and the population. The proposed changes are already written and ready to be rubber-stamped:
1. Dump the Presidential system in favor of a parliamentary system, thus eliminating the Senate altogether, while allowing Arroyo to become Prime Minister, bypassing the term limits on her Presidency;
2. Eliminate the constitutional restraints on foreign ownership of certain industries and raw materials, allowing the transfer of the nation's wealth to those holding the (illegitimate) foreign debts.
Although the Supreme Court could rule against this criminal ploy, it is a court stacked by Arroyo, and is widely expected to join in this coup against the Constitution. There are also reports that former President Gen. Fidel Ramos (ret.), the puppet of George Shultz in carrying out two earlier coups against constitutional governments in the Philippines, is trying to organize a military junta in support of the Arroyo coup, to preempt any action against it by the military.
July 4 (EIRNS)—The H1N1 swine flu is hitting Australia and New Zealand, now in their Winter season. Australia now has just under 5,000 reported cases, with 10 deaths. As symptoms remain mild in most cases, the actual number of infections is expected to be many times greater.
The rate of spread of H1N1 in the Southern Hemisphere, has prompted yet another expert, Prof. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University, to add his voice to those who believe H1N1 will become the dominant strain in the next influenza season in the Northern Hemisphere this Fall.
Meanwhile, Japan and Hong Kong have identified cases of the H1N1 virus that are resistant to one of the widely produced anti-viral drugs, Tamiflu. Anti-viral drugs do not prevent infection, but can reduce the severity of symptoms, if applied early, and thus reduce the number of life-threatening cases.
The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare reported July 3 that initial production of vaccines is way below the number projected. Health officials said doses likely would be available to 14-17 million people, instead of the 25 million covered by earlier projections.
June 28 (EIRNS)—Malaysia's semi-official New Straits Times daily carried a strongly pro-nuclear pair of articles today. Nuclear power was put on the table earlier this month when Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced in South Korea that Malaysia will develop a reactor.
In his article, "We have expertise to go nuclear," Atomic Energy Licensing Board chairman Prof. Datuk Dr. Noramly Muslim said that Malaysia has the expertise to build its own nuclear power plant, earlier than previously estimated. The country has around 80 PhDs with expertise in nuclear engineering technology and, according to Noramly, only about 10% to 15% of this expertise is required to operate a nuclear plant. (Detractors of nuclear power in the Philippines and elsewhere argue that their countries are not capable of handling nuclear power.)
Prof. Jong Hyun Kim of the Nuclear and Quantum Engineering Department at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, who is in Malaysia, said in a second article, that while it took his country some 20 years to build a nuclear power plant, Malaysia would need only half that time. According to Kim, Korea had only three nuclear scientists with PhDs when it embarked on building its first nuclear power plant.
Noramly dealt with the question of "nuclear waste," saying the issue was not one of safety, but "of a political nature." In reality, Noramly said, "the waste can be recycled. It has more value than the original uranium."
Earlier in the week, the newspaper carried a debate between Dr. Nahrul Khair Alang Mohd Rashid, president of the Malaysian Nuclear Society, and Dr. Ronald McCoy, president of Physicians for Peace and Social Responsibility.
LaRouche associate Mohd Peter Davis in Malaysia has helped spark the new assertiveness by his friends in the nuclear community. Davis will be a speaker at the International Nuclear Conference 2009, to be held in Kuala Lumpur June 29-July 2.
Africa News Digest
July 4 (EIRNS)—The African Union yesterday made a consensus agreement not to cooperate with the so-called International Criminal Court (ICC) to extradite Sudan President Hassan al-Bashir to The Hague to face charges leveled against him by that private imperial institution. The AU decision was taken at its yearly head-of-state summit, held this year in Libya.
The summit communiqué declared that AU members shall not cooperate with the ICC "in the arrest and transfer of the president of Sudan to the ICC." The communiqué also "expresses its preoccupation about the behavior of the ICC prosecutor" Luis Moreno Ocampo. Under his leadership, the ICC has launched investigations into four cases since its creation seven years ago—all of them in Africa.
Jean Ping, chair of the Commission of the African Union, voiced Africa's frustration with the failure of the UN Security Council to consider a request to suspend the warrant against Bashir for a year. Although the ICC is not a UN institution, the UN Security Council was given the capability to defer cases for a year, as a way of making the ICC palatable to enough nations for it to appear credible. Such a UNSC suspension is renewable. Ping said: "They [African nations] are showing to the world community that if you don't want to listen to the continent, if you don't want to take into account our proposals, ... if you don't want to listen to the continent, as usual, we also are going to act unilaterally."
Sudan Foreign Ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadig welcomed the AU decision, saying that now Bashir "is free to travel anywhere in Africa, including those countries that have ratified the ICC's Rome statute." He added: "We think that Africa is now one front against the ICC.... Most Africans believe it is a court that has been set up against Africa and the third world. [The African Union decision] makes us feel that we are not alone, that people are supporting us."
The decision was denounced by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, both of which are institutions formed by the London-based imperial financial cartel. "By supporting a wanted person accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, it undermines the credibility of states who are party to the Rome Statute and the AU as a whole," complained Amnesty International. Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, a high-level Brutish operative who played a key role in setting up the ICC, along with George Soros, was at the site of the summit.
June 24 (EIRNS)—Britain, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf Emirates have swooped down on Africa, using their oil revenue and ill-gotten "offshore" money to buy up land, so as to ensure food for their own kingdoms. This could lead to mass starvation in the food-short continent of Africa. While a few other nations are also leasing land in Africa, Britain, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf Emirates dominate. All the leasing is being done by private companies of those countries.
Here is an abridged list of the land grabbing that is in progress.
Angola: The UK-based Lonrho corporation leased 25,000 hectares for rice.
Egypt: Saudi Arabia's Jenat company secured 10,000 hectares for barley, wheat, and livestock feed; Dubai World Trading Co. secured 5,000 hectares for tea in a joint venture with East Africa agribusiness; Britain's Sun Biofuels secured land for jatropha, a biofuel crop; Saudi investors leased land in exchange for $100 million in investment.
Kenya: Qatar leased 20,000 hectares for fruit and vegetable cultivation in exchange for funding a $2.3 billion port.
Sudan: Kuwait secured a giant strategic partnership; Qatar set up a joint holding company to invest in agriculture; Saudi Arabia leased 10,000 hectares for wheat, vegetables, and livestock; South Korea secured 690,000 hectares for wheat; the United Arab Emirates is investing in 378,000 hectares after already securing 30,000 for corn, alfalfa, and possibly wheat, potatoes, and beans.
Tanzania: Saudi Arabia wants to lease 500,000 hectares; CAMS Group of Britain purchased 45,000 hectares for sweet sorghum, a biofuel crop; Sun Biofuels of Britain secured 5,500 hectares for jatropha.
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