EDITORIAL
Obama Out-Flanked—Do Americans Have the Courage To Drive Him Out?
April 19 (EIRNS)—President Barack Obama, who, like his predecessor George W. Bush, has fully embraced the terrorist networks created by the Saudi and British Royal Families as collaborators in colonial “regime change” operations, is now off to bow and kiss the feet of the world’s most prolific killers, King Salman of Saudi Arabia and the bloody Queen of England and the British Commonwealth.
But, the explosion into the public eye this past week of Obama’s personal role in hiding the Saudis’ direct role in the terrorist attack on the United States on 9/11, contained in the 28 pages of the Congressional 9/11 report which Obama has refused to declassify, has placed Obama on a course to self-destruction, proving to the world that he is himself complicit in international terrorism.
If Obama refuses to declassify the 28 pages, he confirms his treason against the United States (and the world) for covering up the British/Saudi terrorism. If he chooses to declassify the 28 pages, it will demonstrate that he, like Bush, worked hand-in-hand with the Saudi-controlled terror apparatus, and therefore confirms his treason against the United States.
Those many cowardly Americans who knew Obama committed multiple crimes against the Constitution, but who claimed it was “not practical” to impeach him or force his removal under the 25th Amendment, must now denounce their own subservience to “practicality” and join with LaRouche in demanding the truth, regardless of the consequences.
The CBS “60 Minutes” program on April 10 which blew the cover on the Obama/Bush cover-up of the Saudi role in 9/11, identified former FBI Director Robert Mueller as the individual who demanded the classification of the 28 pages. Not surprisingly, it was the same Robert Mueller who headed the “Get LaRouche Task Force” in the 1980s, which railroaded LaRouche and several of his associates to prison, desperately (but unsuccessfully) trying to break the power of the LaRouche movement in identifying the crimes of London, Wall Street, and their political assets in Washington, such as Bush and later Obama, and posing a future for America and the world based on development, scientific progress and the fostering of creativity in every human being.
Now, the bankruptcy of the Wall Street “too big to fail” banks is no longer hidden. The West’s financial oligarchs are screaming for negative interest rates and “helicopter money” to keep them afloat for a few more days or weeks. This bankruptcy is the driving force behind the British/Obama push for war on Russia and China. Only the removal of Obama, now—not after an election which has no candidates even qualified to be President of the U.S.—can prevent this disaster, creating the pre-conditions for a new world order based on the common aims of mankind be created.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Obama Has Never Read the 28 Pages!
April 19 (EIRNS)—In an interview with Charlie Rose on CBS Evening News last night, President Obama was asked if he has read the still-classified “28 pages” of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
Obama replied, “I have a sense of what’s in there.” He went on to explain that he is dealing with the “28 pages” through Jim Clapper and his intelligence team, who will make the judgments on what endangers U.S. national security interests.
One Obama Advisor Interviews Another, To Explain Obama’s Alliance with Saudi Terrorists
April 19 (EIRNS)—David Axelrod, Obama’s Chief Campaign Strategist in 2008 and 2012, and Senior Advisor to Obama after his election, interviewed Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes in his podcast broadcast “The Axe Files” yesterday on Saudi Arabia, terrorism, and the 9/11 attack on the U.S., as the world explodes with the now very public exposure of Obama’s coverup of the Saudi role in international terrorism.
Rhodes was clearly deployed by the White House to make some partial and obfuscatory confessions about the Saudi role in funding and arming international terrorism, in a desperate effort to cover Obama’s exposed rump as he flies off to kiss the Saudi King’s bloody hand. Rhodes told Axelrod that Saudi Arabia paid “insufficient attention” to money that was being funneled to terrorists: “I think that it’s complicated in the sense that, it’s not that it was Saudi government policy to support al-Qaeda, but there were a number of very wealthy individuals in Saudi Arabia who would contribute, sometimes directly, to extremist groups. Sometimes to charities that were kind of, ended up being ways to launder money to these groups. So, a lot of the money, the seed money, if you will, for what became al-Qaeda, came out of Saudi Arabia.”
“Could that happen without the government’s awareness?” Axelrod asked.
Rhodes replied that he doesn’t believe the government was “actively trying to prevent that from happening,” but certain people, within the government, or their family members (Royal Family members, perhaps?), were able to operate on their own, which allowed for the money flows. “So, basically there was, certainly, at least a kind of insufficient attention to where this money was going over many years from the government apparatus,” Rhodes said.
Axelrod asked Rhodes why on the one hand, we called the Saudis “an ally, and on the other hand, they have these deep roots in these extremist elements?”
Rhodes responded, “I would stop short of saying that there was any willful government intention from Saudi Arabia to support al-Qaeda. I think the difficult thing that Americans need to understand is we forge these relationships with governments because we have some shared interest with them.”
Newly Released Documents Further Detail Obama’s Collusion with 9/11 Sponsors
April 19 (EIRNS)—The Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), the highest declassification authority in the Executive Branch of the U.S. Federal Government, housed at the National Archives, has declassified 29 new documents relating to the government’s investigations into the 9/11 attacks, and they reveal new damning details about the Saudi Royal Family’s deep involvement in those Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
From the time of his first campaign for President in 2008, Obama has promised the families of the 9/11 victims that he would declassify the 28 pages from the original Joint Congressional Inquiry, which detail the Saudi involvement in those heinous attacks. He not only broke that promise. He has consistently protected the Saudis from justice over their role in 9/11, and is now openly showing his hand by pledging to veto the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), now before the Congress, just prior to Obama’s now-ongoing visit to Saudi Arabia. The President has sold out the American people to his slavish loyalty to the Saudis and their British patrons. This is a crime that demands, at minimum, President Obama’s immediate impeachment from office.
The 29 documents, most recently declassified, contain work sheets, interview notes, and other documents from the 9/11 Commission, that make clear that the Federal investigators probing the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks had compiled massive amounts of evidence of direct involvement by agents of the Saudi Royal Family, the Saudi Ministry of Religious Affairs, and the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation. They provide a backdrop to the suppressed 28-page chapter from the earlier Joint Inquiry, which merely summarized the volumes of evidence compiled—and covered up—about the direct Saudi government complicity in 9/11.
Perhaps the single most damning document, declassified last year, is a 47-page memorandum by Dana Leseman and Michael Jacobson, detailing all of the Saudi government officials who were implicated in the 9/11 attacks. Leseman was a Justice Department attorney and Jacobson was an FBI Special Agent. Both had served as key investigators for the Joint Inquiry, and had authored the 28-page chapter that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have suppressed. They went on to work for the 9/11 Commission, where their efforts to pursue the Saudi leads from their earlier work were stymied by Commission director Philip Zelikow. Leseman was ultimately fired by Zelikow for refusing to obey his orders to stop the probe of Saudi Royals’ ties to 9/11.
The 47-page document identified a total of 21 confirmed and suspected Saudi government employees who abetted the San Diego hijackers cell during the year-and-a-half that they were in the United States preceding the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The document detailed all of their roles in supporting the two West Coast hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. It also called for a thorough investigation of the FBI, which had an informant in San Diego who housed the two 9/11 hijackers in his home for months before the attacks.
One of the central figures linking the Saudi regime to the 9/11 plotters was Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi intelligence agent who was the main financier of al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar during their entire time in the United States. In addition to his no-show job, with a sizeable expense account from a Saudi Ministry of Defense and aviation contractor, Dallah Aviation, al-Bayoumi earlier received $400,000 from the Saudi Ministry of Religious Affairs during the 1990s, ostensibly to build a mosque in the San Diego area. Investigators believed that those funds may have been used to build up terrorist cells in the area. These beliefs were buttressed by the fact that the San Diego mosque was run by Anwar Al-Awlaki, a spiritual leader of al-Qaeda, who was ultimately killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen—and who may have also been an FBI informant.
The evidence of deep Saudi involvement is almost matched in the 47-page document by evidence of FBI coverup of the 9/11 story. One segment of the recently declassified “Document 17” featured a series of questions about FBI stonewalling and coverup.
The document posed the following two questions: “1. Did the FBI intentionally withhold from the Joint Inquiry information about the informant’s relationship with the hijackers and subsequently attempt to obstruct the Joint Inquiry’s investigation of the matter?
“2. If the FBI did withhold information and obstruct the Joint Inquiry’s investigation, were the FBI’s actions indicative of a larger pattern of FBI non-compliance with Congressional oversight? What changes would therefore be needed to ensure more effective Congressional oversight of the FBI?”
A thorough review of all of the newly released documents is now underway. But sufficient evidence is already reviewed, proving the deep Saudi role in 9/11 and the ongoing coverup by President Obama and top officials of the FBI.
The evidence of President Obama’s witting role in this coverup already meets and passes the Constitutional standards of “high crimes and misdemeanors” requiring impeachment proceedings. There are credible reports circulating in Washington that President Obama is using his current visit to Saudi Arabia to solicit funds from the Saudi Royals for his post-presidential library and career—perhaps in return for guarantees that the 9/11 story will continued to be covered up at the top. Is there any justification for delaying one moment more the launching of those long-overdue impeachment proceedings?
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Will Hypersonic Weapons Cause World War III?
April 19 (EIRNS)—Will hypersonic weapons cause World War III? That seems to be the question raised by an April 14 article by Defense One’s Patrick Tucker. The hypersonic vehicle (that is, a vehicle that travel at speeds of Mach 5 to 19 at flatter trajectories than ballistic warheads) research has been getting a big boost in the U.S. defense budget with Raytheon and Lockheed Martin getting $20-$24 million, respectively, for their particular projects, and with the U.S. Air Force planning to test fly a hypersonic missile by 2020. The Pentagon sees such technologies as the answer to the increasing vulnerability of stealth aircraft to programmable, low-frequency radars being built by both Russia and China. Instead of making yourself invisible to it, you simply outrun it with speed.
Pentagon and industry officials associated with these programs also insist that there are no plans to put nuclear warheads on hypersonic weapons, but even if that’s true, it may be irrelevant, since against what other kinds of targets would you use such weapons, if not strategic targets? “I see hypersonics as weapons whose only plausibly logical use would be a niche role in a strategic first strike vs. Russia or China,” physicist Mark Gubrud told the Defense One site. “So the nuclear standoff already exists, and this road is taking us closer to war.”
Defense One quotes Tong Zhao, an associate in the Carnegie Endowment’s Nuclear Policy Program, from an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last summer: “Some analysts in China suspect that the United States is seeking the ability to eliminate Beijing’s nuclear deterrent in a first strike—and if Washington successfully develops hypersonic missiles, Beijing’s confidence in the credibility of its nuclear deterrent would only erode…. Already, some in China are discussing whether Beijing should, in the face of new conventional threats to its nuclear arsenal, alter its unconditional no-first-use policy.”
The history of U.S. advances in hypersonics is intertwined with nuclear weapons research, Gubrud points out, and even non-nuclear hypersonic weapons would be mainly intended to attack strategic targets including nuclear weapons and the infrastructure of nuclear war.
The fact is, even if deploying these weapons are far off in the future, the intention behind them is already in place, as indicated, for example, by the U.S. Prompt Global Strike concept, which, though Tucker doesn’t say so, is likely what’s behind the U.S. drive for hypersonic weapons. It would be even better to abandon the method of geopolitics which is behind U.S. foreign policymaking and its drive towards global war.
NATO To Offer ‘Associate Partnership Status’ To Georgia, Ukraine
April 19 (EIRNS)—According to a report in the web weekly New Europe, NATO will offer Ukraine and Georgia a new construct called “Associate Partnership Status” at the NATO summit in Warsaw in July. NATO calls it a “28+2” arrangement, similar to what Finland and Sweden have been offered in the Baltic region. Finland and Sweden both participated in NATO exercises and have allowed NATO forces onto their territory, but NATO’s Article 5 defense commitment does not extend to them. The idea was previously articulated by Alexander Vershbow, the current Deputy Secretary-General of NATO, during the Conference on Security in Kiev in April. Vershbow apparently made clear that the intention is to bottle up Russia in the Black Sea, with every other country that surrounds it either being a NATO member—Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria—or, with Georgia and Ukraine, being in under the “28+2” arrangement.
Putin and Obama Discuss Syria
April 19 (EIRNS)—Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama spoke by phone, yesterday, at the initiation of the U.S. side, according to the Kremlin, to discuss Syria and Ukraine. Putin “stressed the need for the moderate opposition to distance themselves swiftly from ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, and to close Syria’s border with Turkey, from where fighters and arms supplies for the extremists make their way in,” according to the Kremlin readout. “The two presidents agreed to continue building up their coordination on Syria, including through their intelligence services and defense ministries. For this purpose, additional measures will be put in place for rapid response to violations of the ceasefire.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in remarks to reporters, yesterday that echoed Putin’s statements to Obama, noted that so-called moderate rebel groups that signed onto the Russia-U.S. brokered ceasefire have not removed themselves from proximity to areas controlled by Jabhat al Nusra. According to a lengthy report in RT, Lavrov blamed the U.S. for failing to exert influence on the opposition, and questioned its claims of being moderate.
Washington officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, agreed with Moscow’s stance “that if these groups want to fulfill the conditions of the ceasefire and don’t want to look like terrorist supporters, they must do a simple thing—change their dislocation area and physically separate themselves from the terrorists,” Lavrov said. He added that the U.S. has repeatedly promised Russia to exert its influence on the moderate opposition, but the minister said that “those promises are still not fulfilled.”
“If this moderate opposition doesn’t want to leave the areas occupied by Al-Nusra, maybe it is not moderate? Maybe they are just those, who cooperate with Al-Nusra despite the UN Security Council resolution?” he asked. Both Al-Nusra and ISIS, Lavrov stressed, are trying to improve their positions in Aleppo. They are, I stress once again, a legitimate target for those, fighting against terrorism in Syria,” he said.
COLLAPSING WORLD FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Corporate Default Wave Completely Concentrated in Trans-Atlantic
April 19 (EIRNS)—Additional reporting today by S&P Ratings Services makes clear the large global wave of corporate debt defaults going on is not global; it is overwhelmingly concentrated in the United States and Europe, linked to the lack of fixed capital investment, productivity growth, or any growth in the trans-Atlantic area.
As previously reported, the amount of corporate debt defaults has reached $50 billion, and the highest total of the century so far was $60 billion through April in 2009; that may well be exceeded by the end of this April. The number of companies defaulting on their debt is also hitting levels of the depths of the financial crisis in 2009.
USA Today reported April 18, based on the S&P report, that 46 companies with significant levels of debt have defaulted so far this year, and 37 were based in the United States, with almost all the rest in Europe. Five defaulted this week in the week ended April 17, “including New Jersey-based chemical company Vertellus Specialties and Ohio-based iron ore producer Cliffs Natural,” as well as the large oil producer Energy XXI.
A significant number of defaults are occurring by companies which “financial engineered” themselves into trouble—(borrowing to buy back their own stock and feed the Fed’s stock bubble). And the number of companies S&P has downgraded for this reason, has reached 61 so far this year and will easily be the highest in any year this century.
It was also reported that both housing construction starts and permits in the United States fell sharply in March, by 8-9%, indicating the recent months’ rise in construction employment—the only “goods-producing employment which as grown in more than a year—will end.
British Offshore Havens Are the Jewels of the British Empire, Writes Le Monde
PARIS, April 19 (EIRNS)—Following Jacques Attali’s weeklyL’Express column titled “When Can We Expect the London Papers?” on April 17 Le Monde also went gunning for the City of London in a full-page story entitled “Offshore Havens, the Jewels of the British Empire.”
The article explains in detail that the City is the result of “feudal” and “imperial” legacies. The whole picture is completed by close-ups of the British Overseas Territories serving as tax havens; territories under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom—Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, Gibraltar, Anguilla and Montserrat islands. And, the Crown Dependencies which belong directly to the British Crown, are not part of the United Kingdom; The Isle of Man, and The Channel Islands (Guernsey and Jersey).
The page includes detailed information: How “since the Middle Ages,” the City has a special status obtained from King John Lackland granting it autonomy and a favorable tax law; how the ideal tools for tax evasion, the “trusts,” go back to “the times of the Crusades,” when Crusaders going to the Middle East entrusted their wealth to a “trusted” third party manager; and how under the Empire, the British or foreign companies based in Britain were given “non-resident” fiscal status, which granted heads of companies based outside of Britain a tax exemption.
“Today, the confetti of the British Empire represents two-thirds of the world’s currently active tax havens. Following the fall of the Empire, the metropolis proposed to its former overseas territories a voluntary association. Some became Overseas British territories; others are members of the Commonwealth; others, newly independent states. So each maintains a close link to the old Metropolis. London thus has the means, if it wishes, to use some leverage to fight against fiscal fraud. Yet, of the 30 countries on the list of non-cooperative fiscal entities, 23 have a close link to London.”
NEW WORLD ECONOMIC ORDER
Indonesia Holds Forum on 1965 Genocide
April 19 (EIRNS)—For the first time since the genocidal massacre in 1965-66 of several hundred thousand followers of Indonesia’s liberation leader Sukarno by the Indonesian military, backed by the U.S., British and Australian governments in the name of “fighting communism,” the government in Jakarta sponsored a two-day forum to openly discuss that previously taboo period of Indonesian history. The subject has been forbidden to be discussed all this time, and thousands of the victims and their families who survived death are still in jail or suffer from laws which explicitly deny them certain rights.
On April 18-19, under the leadership of retired Gen. Agus Widjojo, 200 people—victims, government officials, academics, military perpetrators of the killing—are speaking at the “National Symposium on the 1965 Tragedy.” President Joko Widodo has called for addressing the issue, but even as recently as late last year a forum planning to discuss it was shut down by the government.
The role of President Obama’s stepfather Lolo Soetoro, who participated in the slaughter, and who passed on to his stepson Barack the importance of being able to kill the weak if you are to be strong, is unlikely to be discussed at this forum, but it opens up the opportunity to force this sordid history of the killer Obama into the open. (See “How Obama Learned To Love Murder” and “Obama and the Indonesian Murder Cult.”)
The release of two chilling documentaries on the genocide by filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer (“The Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence,” available at Netflix) has spurred interest and concern around the world to end the coverup of one of the most massive genocides of the modern era.
Luhau Pandjaitan, a Coordinating Minister for Security who opened the Forum, said that the government would not conduct criminal proceedings against any perpetrators, according to AP, but only “expressions of regret” to the victims. He said that the process would get at the truth of how the slaughter took place. “Perhaps its wording would be ‘remorse for past events, which were a dark history for this nation, and which we hope will not ever happen again.’ ”
U.S. Ambassador Robert Blake told the Sydney Morning Heraldthat the U.S. welcomed the forum, and that “the Obama Administration is very committed to transparency and openness.” This is a bad joke, since Obama is now being lambasted publicly for his suppression of the Saudi responsibility for the 9/11 terror attack on the U.S., but also because the U.S. role in orchestrating the 1965 slaughter has already been exposed in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) releases. Even if the British/U.S. role is not brought out at the forum, the door is now open for a full exposure of these crimes, and of the deadly influence on the young Obama during his years in Indonesia immediately after the killings.
China Plans for Syria Reconstruction
April 19 (EIRNS)—The Syrian Investment Agency (SIA) Deputy Director Inas al-Omawi met with the Chinese Ambassador to Syria Wang Kejian for a discussion of China’s intended role in the reconstruction of Syria. This extension of the Silk Road process into the Mideast, proposed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche and elaborated by Xi Jinping during his Jan. 19-23 visit to Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Egypt, is the necessary basis to end the British-instigated perpetual warfare in the region.
Ambassador Wang told Syria Radio that the plans include “infrastructure, renewable and conventional energy, nuclear and space technology, industry, technology, and oil exchange.” But the Ambassador noted that “they are struggling under the U.S. and European unfair sanctions imposed on Syria,” and added that “any future cooperation and new projects should be planned and implemented as soon as appropriate conditions are available.”
Indian Defense Minister in China
April 19 (EIRNS)—Despite massive efforts by the Obama Administration to pull India into anti-China cooperation with Washington, including Ash Carter’s recent visit to Delhi, India’s Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar is spending five days in China, meeting with his counterpart Gen. Chang Wanquan, Premier Li Keqiang, and others.
According to Catch News, Parrikar said that India attaches the highest priority to its relationship with China and was looking forward to expand military ties between the two countries. He and General Chang inspected an Honor Guard in front of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) headquarters near Tiananmen Square.
Parrikar will address the incidents of incursions; implementation of an agreement to reduce tensions between border patrols, and Sino-India strategic concerns during the talks. He will visit China’s recently integrated Western Command military headquarters, which has jurisdiction over border with India.
SCIENCE & INFRASTRUCTURE
The Empire Complains About Africa’s Space Programs, While China Trains Its Engineers
April 19 (EIRNS)—“African nations that have received billions of pounds in British aid to combat poverty and starvation are spending vast sums on launching rockets into space and astronomy research”—Britain’s Daily Mail.
To wit: Nigeria, “given more than £1 billion by Britain between 2010 and 2015, has already sent six satellites into orbit,” the article reports (two were built in Britain), and the country’s Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, is taking a delegation to China this month, to discuss plans for a manned mission. Nigerian officials have pointed out that space is a “key to development,” needed to improve agriculture and to track Boko Haram.
Ethiopia has developed East Africa’s first observatory, the article “reveals,” which houses two telescopes, built by private donors, but with operating costs taken over recently by the government, which the article laments. Ghana has launched a Space Science and Technology Institute to “develop the nation’s space talents.” Kenya and Gabon have space projects under consideration, adding to the Empire’s dismay.
“The revelations—underlining the speed of change in Africa—follow past concern over British aid funding for India when it was developing a major program that included a mission to Mars.” But a British government spokeswoman assures us that no British aid was spent on helping developing countries put people into space!
By comparison, Channels Television reported yesterday that the Chinese government will offer 700 scholarships, and expertise, to train 1,000 Nigerian engineers in space development. Science and Technology Minister Onu told reporters yesterday that China has offered to build a ground receiving station in Nigeria at no cost. The station, he explained, “will enable Nigerian scientists to collect data from all Chinese satellites.” He added, “We want to start assembling satellites.” Minister Onu reported that the government has made provision to set up an assemble-integrate-and-test facility to start producing its own satellites.
