EDITORIAL

‘Houston, We Do Have a Problem: It’s Obama’

Feb. 10 (EIRNS)—As President, Barack Obama has driven the United States toward war with Russia and China, and has robbed its scientific identity by scrapping entirely the American mission of space exploration.

LaRouche Democrat leader Kesha Rogers of Texas today declared a new national mobilization to reverse Obama’s destruction of the American space program. In 2010 and 2012, Rogers won successive Congressional Democratic nominating primaries in Texas around the banner, “Save NASA, Impeach Obama.”

In an Internet broadcast today, Rogers said: “Obama’s intention going back to that dismantling of the space program in 2010, is … a complete ripping apart, of what was a visionary perspective of leadership, under President John F. Kennedy, that had been taken down under the Obama administration—which was the intention to put forth a policy of zero growth.

“Yesterday, I attended an event called ‘The State of NASA.’ Many people saw this event, it was aired live with the NASA director Charlie Bolden, as well as others.

“And what was just astonishing to me, was the fact that the President cuts the entire budget, continuing to cut the budget to the Orion mission, the manned flight mission, continuing to dismantle the Moon mission—matter of fact, there’s no Moon mission any longer; and at the same time cutting all fusion programs….

“The director of the space program lays out that ‘We are closer than ever to getting to the Red Planet.’ I find this a paradox, from the standpoint that we’ve cut all missions to go back to and industrialize and actually develop the Moon.

“You have to go back and look at the history in terms of, visionary leadership started with those people who had a conception of the human mind that reached out far into the destiny of our Solar System. And it wasn’t just a profit mechanism, or it wasn’t just about budgets, and cutting budgets, or trying to go to space ‘on the cheap.’

Rogers turned to “a real example of visionary leadership … the great spirit and mind of Krafft Ehricke, a pioneer in space flight, rocketry, engineering, who worked alongside and was a student developing the ideas of [Wernher] von Braun, and what really made our space program and the vision that took us to the Moon, with Apollo 11, through the Saturn V rocket.

“But he expressed something, again, which was a higher order of magnitude in terms of the philosophy and mindset in what he understood was the basis of the space program, which was, again, the defense of the human mind, and the creativity of the human mind. In Krafft Ehricke’s ‘Anthropology of Astronautics,’ he outlines his three fundamental laws:

“ ‘1. Nobody and nothing under the natural laws of this universe imposes any limitations on man, except man himself.

“ ‘2. Not only the Earth, but the entire Solar System, and as much of the universe as he can reach under the laws of nature, are man’s rightful field of activity.

“ ‘3. By expanding throughout the universe, man fulfills his destiny as an element of life, endowed with the power of reason and the wisdom of the moral law within himself.’…

“Krafft Ehricke himself warned that a society that turned against true progress and adopted a trajectory toward zero growth, limits to growth, … a society that would cease to recognize its true human potential.

“Ehricke wrote: ‘The concept of space travel carries with it enormous impact, because it challenges man on practically all fronts of his physical and spiritual existence. The idea of traveling to other celestial bodies reflects to the highest degree the independence and agility of the human mind. It lends ultimate dignity to man’s technical and scientific endeavors. Above all, it touches on the philosophy of his very existence. As a result, the concept of space travel disregards national borders, refuses to recognize differences of historical or ethnological origin, and penetrates the fiber of one sociological or political creed as fast as that of the next.’ [as written]

“And given the circumstances that we find society in right now, the continued escalation of conflict and tension among nations, what we’re seeing in terms of the continued drive of warfare or the escalation against Russia, against China; it is an attack on this very conception, of the human mind.”

Kesha Rogers has put her finger on the crime of Obama as President: The robbery of the mission of the United States, and therefore of the mental powers of its citizens. Her campaign aims to restore it.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

NATO Approves Military Buildup in Eastern Europe

Feb. 10 (EIRNS)—NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels, today, approved plans for a military build-up in the Alliance’s eastern members, particularly in the Baltic states and Poland. The build-up will take the form of added rotational forces from the United States and other countries, backed up by NATO’s rapid reaction force of 40,000 troops. The enhanced forward presence will be “multinational, to make clear that an attack against one Ally is an attack against all Allies, and that the Alliance as a whole will respond,” Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, according to a statement issued by NATO. “It will be rotational and supported by a program of exercises; and it will be complemented by the necessary logistics and infrastructure to support pre-positioning and facilitate rapid reinforcement.”

According to a report in Reuters, the plan foresees the presence of an additional 1,000 NATO troops in each of six countries, the Baltics, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, to meet the alleged threat from Russia. According to the budget plan released by the Obama Administration yesterday, about 5,000 of those troops will be American.

“Russia is a threat,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Juozas Olekas declared. “It is Moscow’s actions in Crimea, their support for separatists in Ukraine, and their snap exercises that concern us.” However, 1,000 troops clearly won’t satisfy the right-wing government in Poland. Asked about whether a 1,000-troop presence was acceptable, Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz replied, “From our point of view it is clearly too little.” This is expected to be the subject of “difficult talks” at the NATO summit in Warsaw in July.

Stoltenberg said he would be meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 12-14. “We believe that especially when times are difficult, as they are now, it’s even more important that we have political dialogue, channels open, between NATO and Russia,” he said.

Lavrov Warns Turkey Not To Invade Syria

Feb. 10 (EIRNS)—In an interview with the Moskovsky Komsomoletsdaily, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said “I don’t think the coalition led by the Americans and having Turkey as its member will let realize such crazy plans,” as a Turkish invasion of Syria, reported TASS today.

“At the Vienna meeting of the International Syria Support Group, we and the United States were willing, and actively offered, to put in the documents, and then in the United Nations Security Council resolution, one very simple phrase—the Syrian crisis has no military solution. The United States, Russia, and the European states were in favor of this,” Lavrov noted. “However, some American allies in the region decisively blocked the idea. So that [the military scenario—TASS] is quite possible. Now we hear statements about plans to send land forces,” he added.

Lavrov charged that there are secret discussions going on between Turkey and Islamic State.

“Turkey keeps talking about creating a security zone in the Syrian territory, free from the Islamic State,” he said. “Everyone understands that they are talking about the part of the border between the two Kurdish enclaves—combining the two forces Turkey considers absolutely unacceptable, not least because it would block Turkey’s means of supplying fighters in Syria and receive their contraband supplies,” Lavrov said. “There are indications that the leadership of the Islamic State keeps secret contacts with Turkish officials,” he went on. “They are discussing alternative options in the current circumstances, when the strikes of our Aerospace Forces have seriously limited the possibilities of traditional smuggling routes,” he added.

Turkey Lashes Out at United States, Justifies Invasion of Syria

Feb. 10 (EIRNS)—Meetings between Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi over the next two days, in and around the Vienna meeting of the International Syria Support Group and Munich Security Council meetings, offer a chance to avert the World War III to which Obama’s war policy is otherwise driving the world.

In a classic “breakaway ally” modus operandi, British assets Turkey and Saudi Arabia are asserting their intent to invade Syria, to force the conflict the British are seeking.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ranted before a village headmen meeting in Ankara, that the United States must chose between supporting Kurdish fighters in Syria, or Turkey: “Are you on our side or the side of the terrorist PYD and YPG organization?” he said, Turkish Radio and Television Corp. reported today. He then accused Washington of turning the region into a “sea of blood” by its insistence on working with those Kurdish groups.

Erdogan’s enraged fit followed State Department spokesman John Kirby’s statement on Feb. 8 that the United States recognizes Turkey’s concerns about Syrian armed groups linked to the terrorist organization PKK, but will support the Kurdish PYD and YPG, who have been fighting ISIS in Syria. That came on top of the release of photos of U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition To Counter Daesh, Brett McGurk, meeting with PYD spokesman Polat Can. The Turkish Foreign Ministry called in U.S. Ambassador John Bass over McGurk’s meeting, while Erdogan raved: “How will we ever be able to trust you. Am I your regional partner or are the terrorists in Kobane?”

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu gave the bigger game away today, signalling a coming invasion of Syria by telling a meeting of the ruling AKP parliamentary faction that Turkey owes a “historical debt” to its “Aleppo brothers” who helped defend the country in the early 20th century.

“We will return our historic debt. At one time, our brothers from Aleppo defended our cities of Sanliurfa, Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras; now we will defend the heroic Aleppo. All of Turkey stands behind its defenders.”

In reporting these remarks, RT surmises that Davutoglu was talking about the Turkish war of independence at the end of World War I and the retaking of Turkish cities from Allied forces. RT then points out some ugly historical realities about that time, including that the three cities he named were scenes of massacres of thousands of Armenians and others by Turkish nationalists.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Obama Destroys U.S. Future in Space

Feb. 10 (EIRNS)—Barack Obama’s budget request for NASA in Fiscal Year 2017 marks the first time that NASA has ever been cut to below 0.5% of the Federal budget—its share was near 5% during the years of JFK’s Apollo Program.

In requesting $19 billion for NASA, Obama cut the Congressional authorization for the space agency by $300 million. But he called for much deeper cuts in “deep space” and “planetary” exploration, the area of NASA’s work in which national missions for the future couldemerge. These cuts, combined, were in the range of $1 billion, according to a review in USA Today.

In 2006, NASA, despite years of declining resources in real terms, still was making plans for a Moon base, with a future of scientific observation of the universe and preparations to exploit the Moon, including as a potential forward base for travel to Mars. In some versions of NASA’s planning, the Moon base was to be on the far side.

Obama scrapped that in 2009-10 by killing the Constellation Program, thus making the Moon inaccessible for the indefinite future, and formally renouncing it as a goal.

Now China and Russia are the nations planning for robotic and human landings on the Moon—perhaps in collaboration—led by China’s just-announced intention to start a base on the far side of the Moon by 2018-20.

Obama, when killing Constellation, claimed that the United States could, at some future time, go straight to Mars with a new Space Launch System (SLS) and “Orion” program. Now, in the FY2017 budget, he is killing those programs now, in effect; he would have done so already if Congress hadn’t insisted on investing about $10 billion in SLS/Orion since FY2011.

For SLS, for example, Congressional funding in FY2016 was about $2 billion; Obama calls for $1.3 billion in FY2017.

What Obama wants to increase, in NASA’s budget, is “Earth sciences”—climate-change detection, in his diseased green mind, in the service of driving human science and technology back to the past. As EIR Founding Editor Lyndon LaRouche described it, “By cancelling the space program, you [Obama] actually turn back history.”

House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) immediately denounced Obama’s budget in a statement to Ars Technica, as an “imbalanced proposal [that] continues to tie our astronauts’ feet to the ground and makes a Mars mission all but impossible.”

But the real fight will come, not from austerity-addled Republicans, but from activists with leaders like Texas LaRouche Democrat Kesha Rogers, who won two Congressional primary contests with the plan: “Save NASA; Impeach Obama.”

Lawsuits Put HSBC Back in the Crosshairs for Drug Money Laundering

Feb. 10 (EIRNS)—Lawyers representing the families of U.S. citizens tortured and murdered by the Mexican drug cartels, yesterday filed a powerful Federal civil suit against HSBC bank in the U.S. District Court in Brownsville, Texas. The suit charges that HSBC’s “material support” to the cartels through the laundering of their proceeds, makes it liable under the Anti-Terrorist Act for those tortures and murders.

The case is a de facto indictment of Barack Obama and his Department of Justice, which knowingly refused to prosecute HSBC—the modern avatar of the British Empire’s HongKong and Shanghai Bank, founded to run the opium trade against India and China two centuries ago—and thereby are complicit with the cartels.

The suit filed, demands a jury trial, where evidence can be brought before the public. It argues:

“This is an action brought by American victims of horrific acts of international terrorism committed by some of the most powerful and ruthless of Mexico’s drug cartels…. For the decade leading up the attacks at issue, and with full knowledge of the drug cartels’ terroristic activities the HSBC Defendants … knowingly provided continuous and systematic material support to the cartels and their acts of terrorism by laundering billions of dollars for them…. Over the course of the 21st century, the Mexican drug cartels … have risen as the greatest single threat to Mexican national security and one of the greatest threats to the United States…. The ability to conceal the source of their illicit proceeds and gain access to the international financial system is vital to the existence of the drug cartels and their ability to execute widespread acts of terrorism. Money laundering is the lifeblood of the Mexican drug cartels.”

The suit cites evidence revealed in the devastating report produced by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 2012, which documented HSBC’s money laundering for drug cartels and terrorists around the globe. The Obama administration refused to take action, instead negotiating a “Deferred Prosecution Agreement” (DPA) with HSBC in 2012, under which HSBC paid a fine and promised to “be good” for five years, while the Feds would monitor it to verify that the terms are upheld.

The monitor report produced last year under the terms of that DPA, some 1,000 pages long, found that HSBC has continued violating U.S. money-laundering statutes right and left. This past January, in response to a suit brought by a Philadelphia mortgage holder who claims he was swindled by HSBC, U.S. Federal Court Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn ruled that the monitor report should be partially released to the public.

HSBC and Obama’s Justice Department have appealed the ruling, on the grounds that confidentiality is key for such deferred prosecution agreements.

Hubert Dean Moore, Jr., the mortgage holder fighting for the report’s release, told the New York Post, as published today, that the Department of Justice is “siding with a criminal organization under wraps, under seal, under the veil of secrecy…. Who benefits from this DPA? The people don’t benefit. It’s the bank and the DOJ.”

Supreme Court Stays EPA Coal Ruling: Blow to Obama, COP21 Genocide

Feb. 10 (EIRNS)—The centerpiece of Barack Obama’s program to shut down coal-run power plants across the United States in the fraudulent name of “reducing carbon emissions,” was halted by the U.S. Supreme Court today, with its 5-4 ruling granting a stay on implementation of Obama’s “Clean Power Plan” until the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rules on whether the plan is legal or not. That won’t be soon; oral arguments on the lawsuit filed by 27 states and industry opponents contesting its legality, begin on June 2, 2016, and a decision could come months afterwards.

“U.S Supreme Court Torpedoes Paris COP21 Accord,” was a screaming headline put out by supporters of the climate change hoax. Unable to get legislation passed with sufficient “climate change” restrictions to shut down U.S. industry as demanded by the British Royal Family, Obama walked into the December UN COP21 climate change-conference in Paris bragging that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations his Clean Power plan imposed on the U.S. coal industry would do the trick.

The New York Times warned today that the global warming accord reached in Paris “had as a cornerstone Mr. Obama’s assurance that the United States would carry out strong, legally sound policies to significantly cut carbon emissions,” and that is now in peril. A Chinese government think-tanker told the Times that if “low-carbon development” is overturned in the U.S., opponents in China of these policies will use that to overturn such policies in China, too. An Indian “climate diplomat” similarly told the Times that the decision “could be the proverbial string which causes Paris to unravel.”

The Supreme Court stay is not the final word, but it was considered “stunning” and “extraordinary,” because the court so rarely intervenes in this way while a matter is still before a lower court. Furthermore, given the conditions cited in the Supreme Court’s own “Reporter’s Guide to Applications Pending Before the Supreme Court of the United States,” the granting of the stay gives grounds to believe that, should the Washington, D.C. court rule Obama’s plan legal, the Supreme Court could overturn that decision. The Reporter’s Guide cites “general criteria that the applicant normally must satisfy in order for the Court to grant a stay,” including that there is a reasonable probability that four Justices would agree to hear such an appeal, and that “there is a fair prospect that a majority of the Court” would overturn the lower court division upon review.

White House Press spokesman Josh Earnest blustered that the administration “will continue to take aggressive steps to make forward progress to reduce carbon emissions,” but representatives from the 27 states who joined the suit against Obama’s unilateral action are celebrating. West Virginia’s Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin warned the EPA it must stop its “reckless actions … immediately,” and applauded the Supreme Court “for recognizing that these regulations are simply unlawful.”

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Derivatives Spread the Panic

Feb. 10 (EIRNS)—Behind the smokescreen of a flurry of attempts by trans-Atlantic central banks to halt the financial mudslide, the news is emerging over the past 48 hours that a blowout of the $700 trillion to $1 quadrillion derivatives market is coming up. Derivatives exposure did not start the financial collapse, but it will surely “end” it if Wall Street and the City of London are not shut down fast, with Glass-Steagall measures.

Japan’s Nikkei Asian Review, in an article entitled “Touchy Derivatives Market Spreading Deutsche Bank Waves,” said the derivatives market is now acting as a “fire accelerator” within the growing fire of bank panic. The Financial Times, headlined “Investors Flock To CDS amid Fear over Banks’ Bonds,” reported a huge pile-in to credit defaults swaps (CDS), insurance derivatives against defaults by Deutsche Bank, UBS, and a number of London banks, even as the price of these CDS is zooming up, showing the loss of confidence in those banks’ credit. Despite the Financial Times’ neutral word choice, “investors,” these derivatives all involve a couple of handfuls of London and Wall Street banks as counterparties. The rising risk of each others’ bad loans and declining credit is spreading among these banks: Contagion to Citibank, in particular, is reported. It is no accident that Deutsche and Citi are hugely invested in the so-called “high-yield energy” sector of the bond market, which is falling of a cliff.

Recent central bank moves have had no effect, or in the Bank of Japan’s case, worse than no effect. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s Congressional testimony today, which seemed to assure that the next few months would see no more rate increases, couldn’t prop up the Wall Street markets for even a day. A leak from Mario Draghi’s European Central Bank that it might start buying up bank stocks directly—prohibited by its charter—temporarily sent up Deutsche Bank’s stock. Nonetheless, the CDS “risk cost” of Deutsche Bank debt rose again, to 240 (€240,000 to insure €10 million in debt), it is now equal with Unicredit and Monte dei Paschi di Siena as the riskiest major banks in Europe.

A sign of that panic within that bank, was a letter sent out by its senior credit analysis, one Dominic Konstam. Calling for bail-in to be put aside so that bail-outs can be resumed, the letter is desperate for central banks to provide more liquidity, fast. So much so, that it proposes letting banks charge their depositors negative interest on their savings, as well as deposit and withdrawal fees to confiscate those savings. Basel III requirements should be postponed; let the banks raise their leverage ratios; “open the refi spigot and ease liquidity….”

Wall Street’s stock broadcaster Jim Cramer got no more hysterical than during his infamous 2008 on-air scream for Bernanke to bail out everything.

Real Economy Has Already Collapsed Says CEO of World’s Largest Shipping Company

Feb. 10 (EIRNS)—While the trans-Atlantic banking system is now in mid-stage of its worse-than-2008 financial crash, the physical economy, poisoned by Wall Street and the City of London, has already crashed.

The CEO of the world’s largest shipping company, Maersk Shipping, stated the point today for the second time this year.

“It’s worse than in 2008,” said Maersk Shipping CEO Nils Andersen after releasing the company’s annual results, which included a multibillion-dollar fourth-quarter loss. Its stock price has fallen 60% in a year. “The oil price is as low as its lowest point in 2008-09; freight rates are lower. The external conditions are much worse,” Andersen said.

Maersk has cancelled its orders for more ships, Andersen added, after shipping capacity increased 8% for the industry in a year in which world trade actually fell.

Maersk is one of the recognized bellwethers for the economy as a whole—others include Caterpillar equipment company, UPS and DHL freight forwarders—all of which have registered quarter after quarter of declining revenues and losses.