EDITORIAL
It’s Time To Bring the War on Terror Down on the British Empire
July 20 (EIRNS)—Almost one year ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed a global coalition to defeat the Islamic State and other jihadist terrorists, on the model of the World War II U.S.-Soviet Union-led coalition to defeat the scourge of Nazism and Fascism. Recent developments make it clear that this is now the moment for precisely such a combat alliance—directed against the British Empire.
The release, after a 14-year battle, of the 28 pages from the original Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 has established the undisputed role of the Saudi Monarchy in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in history, and a careful review of the Al Yamamah case makes clear that the Saudis were acting as agents of the British Empire in that atrocity.
Furthermore, the recent release of the Chilcot Commission report has proven that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was guilty of the same class of war crimes for which the top Nazis were tried and convicted at Nuremberg.
In the wake of the recent House Financial Services Committee report, exposing the role of the British government and the Obama White House, in covering up massive drug and terror money laundering by the British Crown’s HSBC, two top officials of HSBC were arrested by the FBI this week, on charges of financial fraud. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Cumulatively, these developments represent the biggest blow to the British Empire in a very long time. The recent coup attempt in Turkey can only be understood from the standpoint of the role of the British Crown in sponsoring and protecting Chechen terrorists, along with virtually every other ethnic separatist gang on the face of the Earth. The Chechens have formed the backbone of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and have enjoyed the protection of the British Crown since the start of the First Chechen War in the mid-1990s. The Chechens were behind the June 28 suicide terrorist assault on the Istanbul Airport, which occurred soon after Turkish President Erdogan, under enormous international pressure and isolation, issued a public apology to Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Nov. 24, 2015 Turkish shooting down of a Russian Su-24 bomber. This is the critical backdrop for any competent assessment of the ongoing events in Turkey.
The British Empire is under assault, is bankrupt, and isolated. Anyone serious about halting the spreading pattern of global blind terrorism should recognize that it can only be defeated in a top down approach—and that means taking down the British Empire.
In the United States, Wall Street, an arm of the British financial empire, has woken up to the fact that there is a full-blown revolt against their corruption and thievery. It has immediately taken the form of the inclusion of a call to reinstate Glass-Steagall in the platforms of both the Republican and Democratic parties, something that Wall Street never saw coming. This has precipitated an hysterical reaction from the financial oligarchy.
As Lyndon LaRouche emphasized today, “Glass-Steagall kills the Empire. And the U.S. economy cannot survive unless there is a return to Glass-Steagall.”
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Republican Party Platform’s Glass-Steagall Plank Explodes in U.S. Press, Sparks National Debate
July 20 (EIRNS)—The U.S. Republican Party’s vote, at its national convention Monday night, July 18, to include in its platform a Glass-Steagall separation of investment and commercial banking, has caused an explosion of press coverage across the U.S. and catalyzed a national debate on Glass-Steagall. The Democratic Party’s platform also includes support for Glass-Steagall, and its party nominating convention begins July 25.
The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which President Franklin Roosevelt signed as soon as he was became President, separated commercial banking from investment, or speculative banking. Under it, only commercial bank deposits, and not speculative instruments, were insured by the Federal government in the event of bank failure.
Since Monday night, the Republican Party Glass-Steagall platform plank has received major coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal, and many other print and electronic media.
The coverage is particularly heavy in New York:
Today’s New York Times article by Jeff Sommer opens with the classic picture of FDR signing the original Glass-Steagall legislation surrounded by congressmen. The Times begins, “Attacking big banks is as American as apple pie. But it’s a new entry on this year’s Republican menu.” It continues that it was repealed under Bill Clinton, and that repeal “didn’t turn out so well … and the world endured a severe financial crisis and global recession…. [Glass-Steagall] has emerged as almost a code word in both parties for poking a finger in Wall Street’s eye….”
The Washington Post article yesterday, referring to the Democratic Senate sponsor of the Glass-Steagall legislation, says, “One of Elizabeth Warren’s key ideas slid into the official GOP platform.” Author Max Ehrenfreund continues that “inclusion in the official platform was unexpected. Wall Street opposes reinstating the law, and many Democratic and Republican experts on the financial system agree that reenacting it would do little to prevent another financial crisis.” Today’s Washington Post article, “Trump’s Convention Further Alienates Wall Street and Its Money Players,” by Matea Gold and Tom Hamburger, says that “Trump is adding fuel to Wall Street anxiety about his candidacy, jabbing directly at big banks….”
Bloomberg News Service on July 19 quotes Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, “We believe the Obama-Clinton years have passed legislation that has been favorable to the banks, which is one of the reasons why you see all of the Wall Street money is going to Mrs. Clinton.” Bloomberg’s Paul Dwyer writes today, “The GOP’s new-found love for Glass-Steagall is best understood not through Trumpism but through the populist prism of Main Street versus Wall Street.”
A second Bloomberg article quotes Brian Gardner, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, warning, “It is a mistake to simply dismiss the news as a cynical political ploy. The risk that Congress will reinstate Glass-Steagall is higher than many investors appreciate.”
Bill Moyers’ ”Morning Read” of July 20 is titled, “GOP Platform Surprise on Financial Regulation.”
Associated Press writer David Dayen’s July 19 article quotes Manafort, that Trump “would support small banks and Main Street.” Dayen says, “This unabashed play for community banks is mirrored in the platform, which notes the sector’s decline from 13,000 in 1985 to only 1,900 today.” The GOP platform states, “Community banks are essential to ensuring small businesses have easy and affordable access to the capital they need to grow and prosper.”
Financial TV channel CNBC’s Jon Marino today reports Trump’s pledge to simultaneously tear down Dodd-Frank and reimplement Glass-Steagall, as a surprise to Wall Street. One lawyer who works with financial firms in New York called the idea “scary,” and even Wilbur Ross, a Trump supporter, called it “surprising.” “Others on Wall Street who spoke to CNBC used stronger language than can be printed,” Marino wrote.
The discussion of Glass-Steagall is spread across all sections of the population. Teen Vogue wrote yesterday that though Clinton calls for good things such as government investment in R&D, “these policies may not matter to voters when stacked against Clinton’s perceived closeness to Wall Street….”
Coverage of Glass-Steagall in both party platforms has appeared in Capitol Hill publications such as Politico and The Hill for the past three days.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
LaRouche on Turkish Coup: Look for Chechen Angle and You Will Find the British
July 20 (EIRNS)—Commenting on the recent Turkish coup, American statesman Lyndon LaRouche said the idea that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan staged a phony coup in order to justify a purge of his opposition was insane. Instead, LaRouche said to look at the Chechen angle, where the critical British connection is to be found. A review of the recent events points precisely in that direction. LaRouche cited his own indirect cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in fighting the Chechen terrorists.
On June 27, President Erdogan sent a letter to President Putin apologizing for Turkey’s shooting down a Russian warplane on Nov. 24, 2015, that was allegedly violating Turkish airspace. It was also announced at that time that Putin and Erdogan could meet in the near future, in August or September. Within 24 hours, on June 28, Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport was the target of a triple suicide bombing, killing more than 40 people and wounding more than 200; the attackers were Chechens who belonged to the Islamic State and had been operating in Syria from bases inside Turkey. This was the first time that a Chechen IS terrorist cell had conducted a suicide bombing in Turkey. Given the timing, the targeting was clearly linked to the Turkish government’s intention to normalize relations with Russia. And since that bombing, the process has continued: Turkey arresting the Turkish Grey Wolves mercenary who shot and killed one of pilots of the Russian warplane who had safely parachuted into Syria. And now, after the coup attempt, the Turkish government has arrested the Turkish fighter pilots who shot down the Russian warplane, citing their involvement in the coup.
It was also decided in a telephone discussion between Erdogan and Putin on July 17, that the two leaders would meet in August. It must be underscored that the role of Turkish military intelligence and organizations linked to Turkish intelligence circles have long had ties with Russian and Chechen terrorists—since the 1990s, when the Chechen wars against Russia were being supplied and supported from Turkish and Saudi bases. There are now 1,500 Chechen refugees in Turkey, most of whom are located at a refugee camp outside of Istanbul and have served as a recruitment pool for IS fighters in Syria.
It is also widely believed that Turkish military intelligence has been supporting Chechen jihadi groups operating in Syria. There is a tremendous amount of open source material on this, including details of reports that the Chechens who had been loyal to former Chechen President, the late Aslan Maskhadov, are the group preferred by Turkish intelligence circles. Maskhadov had led the Chechens in the first Chechen-Russian war, then became president of the semi-autonomous Chechen republic after a peace agreement with the Russian government. When that agreement broke down, another war in which Maskhadov also participated, ensued. He died in 2005.
The Failed Turkey Coup and U.S. Nuclear Weapons
July 20 (EIRNS)—Over the last few days, following the aborted coup d’état in Turkey, there has been a surge of concern about the security of the stockpile of B61-3/4 nuclear gravity bombs that the United States has covertly had in storage at the Incirlik air base in Turkey.
The fact that the Turkish commander of the Incirlik air base was among those high-ranking military officers taken into custody earlier this week for involvement in the coup, has heightened concern about the state of those weapons, estimated to number as many as 90. The U.S. has had nuclear weapons there since the 1950s, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers first built the facility.
In the post-Cold War world, some called for their removal, notably Gen. James Jones (former NATO Commander and National Security Advisor under Obama) in 2005, when he headed NATO. Others say, no, they must be kept there because of Russia’s resurgence. Now, Turkey’s stability is the question. One problem with the argument in favor of the bombs is that there are no aircraft in Turkey capable of delivering the bombs, meaning that nuclear-certified aircraft and crews would have to be brought in to deliver them, were it ever decided to use them. This raises further questions as to why they’re still placed there.
Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, in California, writes in an article in Foreign Policy that coup plotters in countries where there have been military coups in the past have not had nuclear weapons high on their list of priorities.
“If a hostile junta were to seize control of a country with U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in it, things might be dicier,” Lewis writes. The precautions taken at U.S. bases where nuclear weapons are stored are reasonable, Lewis goes on, but “they are based on a series of assumptions about the stability and friendliness of the country. The sight of the Incirlik base commander being frog-marched off the base is disquieting precisely because it undermines such assumptions.”
Given the risk of further chaos in Turkey, retired Defense Intelligence Agency officer Col. Patrick Lang advised, on his blog “Sic Semper Tyrannis” this morning, that the bombs be removed from Turkey. “Think of the potential for blackmail inherent in the possession of one or more of these weapons in the hands of our enemies,” he warned.
Kadyrov Demands Extradition of Chechen Terrorists by Turkey
July 20 (EIRNS)—Ramzan Kadyrov, the President of the Chechen Republic, has written to Turkish officials, demanding the extradition of a number of Chechen terrorists, who have enjoyed years of protection by the Erdogan government in Ankara. In a July 5 letter, Kadyrov demanded that Erdogan turn over the named Chechen terrorists to the Russian FSB, the successor to the KGB.
The number one figure named by Kadyrov was Movladi Udogov, a leading Chechen separatist-turned-jihadist, who has lived openly in Turkey since the early 2000s, according to a report published in Georgia Today. In October 2007, Udogov issued a public proclamation, endorsing the Caucasus Emirate, led by Doku Umarov.
In addition to Udogov, the Chechen President demanded that Erdogan turn over Akhmed Umarov, the brother of the founder of the Caucasus Emirate, and Shirvani Basayev, brother of the leading Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev. Shamil Basayev was the mastermind of the June 1995 Budyonnovsk hostage seizure, in which 2,000 women and children were taken hostage in a Russian maternity hospital, and the September 2004 Beslan, North Ossetia massacre, in which hundreds of children were killed in an assault on a school in southern Russia. Shirvani Basayev was a top commander in the August 1999 invasion of Dagestan, which aimed at creating a Chechnya-Dagestan emirate, and led to the Second Chechen War.
Kadyrov also named three top Chechen ISIS commanders on his list of terrorists to be turned over to the FSB: Makhran Saidov, Tarkhan Gaziyev, and Aslambek Vadalov. The most significant figure named in the extradition list is Akhmed Chatayev, the reported mastermind of the June 28, 2016 Istanbul Airport suicide assault. After fighting under Basayev in the Second Chechen War, Chatayev became the leading spokesman for the Caucasus Emirate in Western Europe, under the protection of the Austrian government.
The push to shut down the Turkish protection of the Chechen terror apparatus has taken on added urgency since the Istanbul Airport attack and the more recent suicide attack on Bastille Day, in Nice, France. The terrorist in Nice declared that he was carrying out the suicide attack in revenge for the U.S. killing of “Omar al-Shishani,” “Omar the Chechen,” who is actually a Georgian of Chechen birth, who fought in the two Chechen Wars and then was in the Georgian Army Special Forces during the 2008 war with Russia, before fleeing to Afghanistan and joining al-Qaeda.
Kadyrov’s extradition demands are clearly aimed at testing out how far Erdogan is willing to go, to secure resumed collaboration with Putin and Russia.
Turkey Putsch Actually Aimed against Russia?
July 20 (EIRNS)—In an exclusive interview with the German-language edition of the Russian multimedia news agency Sputnik, former Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe official Willy Wimmer said what is going on in Turkey is the harvest of Western policies in the region during the past decades. One atrocity has followed another: For instance, he himself in his OSCE function witnessed during a trip to Turkey, the result of the anti-Kurdish wars of the 1970s and 1980s, with millions of refugees and the destruction of 3,000 villages and cities on Turkish territory. This was long before Erdogan came to power. But Erdogan and his family are no humanists, with their own closeness to Islamic State anyway, he notes. However: the most-recent putsch is not Erdogan’s baby, not even aimed against him in the first place, but aimed against someone else, Wimmer hints:
Moscow is right in being worried about one brushfire after another being set around Russia. The political development is evident. The Turkish Republic is predestined to serve as an incendiary spark at the southern flank of NATO and to spread into the entire region. In that, Erdogan is just one pawn among several.
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Impact of Congressional HSBC Exposure: Senior Bankers Charged
July 20 (EIRNS)—The three major exposures just released of British/Saudi attacks on the United States—the Chilcot Report, “28 pages” of the Joint Congressional 9/11 Inquiry, and House Financial Services Report on HSBC crimes—are continuing to combine for a major impact on events in the United States.
Among these, the “surprising” charge today of two relatively senior HSBC bankers. The charges against the HSBC officials, one of whom has been arrested, are rigging the values of currencies, as well as improper use of knowledge of foreign-exchange customers’ accounts, “front-running” those accounts. The Justice Department’s investigation has been going on for four years, and has been in limbo for two!
But suddenly today, Mark Johnson, HSBC’s global head of foreign exchange cash trading in London, was arrested at JFK Airport in New York as he was about to fly out of the country, held in a Brooklyn jail overnight, and appeared in court today. According to Bloomberg News, “The U.S. unsealed charges against him and Stuart Scott, the bank’s former head of currency trading in Europe, making them the first individuals to be charged in the long-running probe.” Bloomberg reports that Scott, who left HSBC in 2014, is in the U.K. and the U.S. may seek extradition.
The investigation was so long-running that “in September 2014, then-Attorney General Eric Holder said he expected charges against individuals within months.”
The House Financial Services Committee’s report on HSBC, released July 8, made clear that British officials and agencies, including then-Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and the U.K. regulator Financial Services Authority (FSA), had intervened to protect HSBC from what should have been much more serious criminal charges—money-laundering for drug cartels with terrorist connections, collaborating with a Saudi bank in doing so. The substance had been provided by a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report in 2012.
It was this British intervention, the House Committee’s report found, which led Holder to state that HSBC was escaping prosecution because ending the bank’s Western Hemisphere operations could trigger a general crash of the banking system.
Now just 12 days after the release of the House report, there finally are criminal charges against relatively senior executives of this criminal bank—marking the first significant move against the HSBC drug-money-laundering bank or any big London or Wall Street bank.
NEW STRATEGIC PARADIGM
Taiwan Lawmakers, Fishermen Go to Taiping Island To Support Stand against Phony Hague Court Decision
July 20 (EIRNS)—A group of Taiwan lawmakers traveled to Itu Aba, or Taiping Island, today, to assert their support for Taiwan’s rejection of the phony Hague arbitration court decision against China on the Nansha Islands. Among other things, the Permanent Arbitration Court ruling declared Taiping Island to be a “rock,” thereby stripping it of its status to have a 200 nautical mile special economic zone. A “rock,” according to UNCLOS cannot sustain human life or economic activity.
The delegation of eight Taiwan lawmakers consisted of four each from the KMT and DPP, underscoring the bipartisan support in the Taiwan legislature. The group toured a newly built port and other infrastructure, and watched 40mm guns being fired during a training exercise. “There is no denying that Itu Aba is an island. It is clear that Taiping Island is unlike the rocks nearby and it is definitely not a rock that the tribunal said it is,” said KMT legislator Johnny Chiang Chi-chen, one of the organizers of the trip. “I have just had locally produced coconut water, and there is fresh water and even solar energy on the island,” he said. “The infrastructure here is more developed than in many places,” Central News Agency quoted him as saying.
“There are also things left behind by Japanese forces during World War II,” said DPP legislator Wang Ding-yu. “Not only is sovereignty over Taiping Island indisputable; the fact that it is an island is unquestionable.”
In related news, five fishing boats departed from Pingtung County in Taiwan with 20 fishermen aboard the vessels, which were draped with Republic of China flags and banners bearing the words “Safeguard Fishing Rights in the South China Sea,” and “Protect Ancestral Assets.” Fishing boat owner and organizer Cheng Chun-chung said that he had been warned yesterday by a fishery official that he risked having his boat license revoked if he sailed to Itu Abu because his license is only valid for trips to Hong Kong and China. He told reporters that he was willing to take the risk.
OTHER
Economic, Political Chaos Wrack Venezuela
July 20 (EIRNS)—The economic and political crisis in Venezuela is so acute, that when President Nicolas Maduro opened the border with Colombia last weekend, tens of thousands of citizens crossed into the Colombian border town of Cucuta to buy food and medicine—staples missing from Venezuela’s supermarkets and pharmacies. Maduro had closed the border with Colombia almost a year ago, but decided to open it for 12 hours on each of July 16 and 17. Colombia’s Foreign Ministry reported that 35,000 Venezuelans entered Cucuta over the weekend.
Venezuela has long been targetted for destabilization, with a political opposition controlled by NGOs tied to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the State Department’s USAID, and other well-known proponents of “regime change” which answer to Wall Street and the City of London. With the election of neocon Mauricio Macri in Argentina last November, and launching of the international bankers’ coup against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, the offensive against Venezuela also accelerated. Opposition leaders, hailed by Macri as crusaders for human rights, say they have gathered enough signatures to hold a referendum to revoke Maduro’s presidential mandate and remove him by “constitutional” means. Whether that will take place is unclear.
The economic crisis is profound. Citizens stand in line for hours at supermarkets to buy basic foods and medicine that are becoming more and more scarce. Protests and riots around the country are increasing. Hospitals strain to provide even minimal services, lacking medicine and other crucial supplies. Thus far, Maduro’s policy response to the worsening crisis has been inadequate, but on July 13, citing national security, he announced the deployment of the armed forces to ports, airports, grain silos, warehouses, and public- and private-sector companies to oversee food distribution.
Maduro charges, not without reason, that the U.S. is behind efforts to oust him; but in late June, at the initiative of Secretary of State John Kerry, he met with Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon, a competent career diplomat with years of experience in Ibero-American affairs. Shannon reported that his visit was intended to initiate a dialogue with Venezuela, which he said he hoped would lead to improved bilateral relations and reduced tensions.
