Did North Korea Really Sink the South's Naval Vessel?

June 3 (EIRNS)—Lyndon LaRouche today reported that credible sources, drawing on a Chinese investigation into the evidence surrounding the sinking of the South Korean naval frigate Cheonan, suggest that the conclusion of the "international investigation," which blamed North Korea, based on circumstantial evidence, is false. LaRouche has repeatedly challenged the accusations against North Korea as lacking any coherent reason, while they are totally coherent with British efforts to create chaos across Eurasia in the face of the global financial collapse and the threat of Eurasian unity against the London/New York bailout of banks at the expense of nations and peoples.

Yoichi Shimatsu, the former editor of Japan Times, asked "Did an American Mine Sink South Korean Ship?" in the New American Media website on May 27. Shimatsu refers to a "technical assessment by the Chinese military, according to a Beijing-based military affairs consultant to the People's Liberation Army," which dismisses the scanty evidence provided by the five-nation investigation (including, in addition to South Korea, a group of old "Cold War" nations, the U.S., Britain, Australia, and Sweden).

Shimatsu notes that a joint U.S./South Korea naval exercise called "Foal Eagle" took place the week preceding the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan. Both the exercise and the sinking took place in the vicinity of Byeongnyeong Island, where a U.S./South Korean anti-submarine warfare base is located. The exercise consisted of anti-submarine maneuvers by five missile ships and a mine-laying ship, the USNS Salvor, with a crew of 12 Navy divers.

Shimatsu does not say that the Chinese accuse the U.S. of an intentional attack, but point to the possibility of an "inadvertent release" of a "rising mine" planted on the seabed and released to hit a ship dead center, breaking the ship in half, as happened to the Cheonan. He notes that a torpedo, in contrast to a rising mine, puts a hole in the hull and tilts the vessel.

He also notes that the first reports indicated gunpowder, which may have come from crude North Korean weapons, but later reports discovered "chemical residues similar to German advanced explosives," as used by NATO forces.

"This is what I thought all along," said LaRouche. "It's not credible to me that it was a North Korean-based operation. It sounds more like a NATO-based operation, an incident created and exploited to destabilize the area of China, Russia, and Japan—and also Vladivostok."

The British Are Setting Up Myanmar for Invasion

June 4 (EIRNS)—Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), who has played an important part in the U.S. engagement effort in Myanmar, cancelled a trip to Myanmar, just hours ahead of his scheduled arrival in Yangon on June 4, giving as reason for the cancellation, reports claiming that Myanmar was building a nuclear weapon with aid from North Korea. Webb admitted, however, that he did not know whether or not "these allegations have substantive merit."

The latest anti-Myanmar report, titled "Expert Analysis: Nuclear Related Activities in Burma," was released by the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), an operation based in Norway and funded by George Soros, London's leading drug pusher, and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the American branch of British intelligence responsible for running subversion against targeted regimes in the developing world.

The author of the report, Robert E. Kelley, is a former investigator for the IAEA, who left that agency to work for the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), set up and run by David Albright, the author of wild accusations against targeted nations of covert nuclear weapons development programs, which accusations are then used to justify colonial military operations by British, Israeli, and NATO forces.

The Kelley report argues that a Burmese machinist named Sai Thien Win had defected with stories and pictures of the factories and machines he worked on in Myanmar. Kelley admits that Sai knew nothing about nuclear power or nuclear physics, had worked on machine tools, producing parts which could be used in missiles, nuclear power plants, or "potentially" for nuclear weapons, and therefore, the Burmese "intention" to produce nuclear weapons is proven.

He also admits knowledge that Russia is planning to build a 10 MW test reactor in Myanmar, and that the IAEA itself is helping to train nuclear scientists and engineers in Myanmar, as is their sovereign right and duty to their people.

Kelley admits that the machine tools used by the defector, which came from Germany and Singapore, "were sold without all of the accessories to make the very precise parts required for many missile and nuclear applications," and that the demonstrations the defector had seen "are quite crude," that the "quality of the parts they are machining is poor," that "nothing we have seen suggests Burma will be successful with the materials and components we have seen."

Nonetheless, with no evidence of any sort, he concludes that there needs to be "thorough investigation of well-founded reporting," and sanctions against "equipment for any weapons of mass destruction"—i.e., ban machine tools for Myanmar and drive it back to the stone age.

'Solidarity for Sovereignty' To Counter Subversion in the Philippines

June 3 (EIRNS)—Butch Valdes, the head of the Philippine LaRouche Society and a well-known nationalist economist in his country, spearheaded the founding of a movement this week called Solidarity for Sovereignty, aimed at uniting the various opposition forces to deal with the massive fraud in the Presidential and Congressional elections held in May. The movement drew about 1,000 people to its first meeting today in Manila, with representatives of nearly all the Presidential candidates in those elections, where they signed a Declaration of Sovereignty, calling for nullification of the election, pending an investigation into the multiple layers of fraud.

The Declaration references the multiple reports of fraud, and the refusal to allow inspection of the machines used by the national election agency and the U.S.-based Smartmatic computer voting machine company that ran the elections.

The Declaration also blasts the new U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines, Harry K. Thomas, for making a grandstand visit to the home of the supposed winner of the Presidential election, Noynoy Aquino (son of Cory, who was placed in power when the Marcos regime was overthrown in 1986 by George Shultz and his boys), even before the official tally of votes took place in the Congress.

The Declaration also points to a dirty deal between Aquino and outgoing President Gloria Arroyo, reported to have been brokered by Thomas, to allow the election to go forward, despite the breakdown of the machines in the days preceding the vote, in exchange for a pledge by Aquino not to prosecute Arroyo (as Aquino had promised to do as part of his campaign) for her many crimes in office.

Speaking at the event, in addition to Valdes, were a leading businessman, Ramon Pedrosa, who co-chairs the Philippines Atoms for Peace Organization, and leading political activist Linda Montayre, among others. A report on drug money in the campaign was a major issue, as a provincial governor who was about to reveal drug money payoffs to top officials was killed last week when his helicopter blew up.