EDITORIAL

As the UN General Assembly Gathers in New York City, Obama Is Facing His ‘Hitler Moment’

Sept. 18 (EIRNS)—As you read this on Sept. 19, some two dozen LaRouche PAC organizers and activists are already deployed on the streets of midtown Manhattan in the vicinity of the United Nations, to spearhead a drive to bring about a monumental shift in the global strategic situation, putting an end to the British Empire’s deadly system once and for all.

That system’s own resounding bankruptcy makes that change both necessary and possible. As EIR Founding Editor Lyndon LaRouche put it in a discussion with associates today:

“You have to recognize that what we are having is a collapsed nominal economy under the U.S. now, as in much of other nations in Europe. Those are things that have to be considered. But they have to be defined, and made clear, so that they are efficiently corrected. In other words, when you find a thing like that, you have got to point out the error of the creation of that policy. And you have to make it stick.”

LaRouche PAC Policy Committee member Michael Steger summarized the organizing perspective in his Saturday dialogue with the Manhattan Project:

“I would say that, based on the discussion with Lyn and Helga this morning, the next six days present a very critical point of escalation in our efforts to win this war: to bring down this British Empire, to bring down this fascist economic system, to bring down this bestial view of man, and to bring down Obama. It just happens that sometimes you have a confluence of interventions, a confluence of events that coincide.”

As world leaders arrive in New York City for this week’s United Nations General Assembly, they will be buzzing with all of these realities—including the fact that Obama has again just brought the world to the very brink of a U.S.-Russia war, by his bombing of Syrian army troops who are battling ISIS. The arriving representatives from around the world will be more receptive than usual to the need for radical change, and they will be greeted by LaRouche PAC organizers with a 10,000 run of the latest edition of The Hamiltonian, featuring Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s “Appeal to the United Nations General Assembly: A New Paradigm for the Common Aims of Mankind!” They will also encounter LaRouche PAC banners and signs, including:

• “LaRouche: Cameron Is Out; Make Obama Next”
• “UNGA, Build LaRouche’s World Land-Bridge”
• “Obama Backs ISIS in Syria”
• “Obama’s Legacy: 5 Wars and 60 Million Refugees”
• “Duterte Was Right: Obama Is a Son of a B****”
• “Cameron, Take the Pig With You” (with a cartoon of Cameron walking out, carrying a pig with Obama’s face); and
• “U.S. Must Join Putin’s Fight Against Terrorism.”

Over this coming week on the domestic front, LaRouche’s forces will hold the U.S. Congress’s feet to the fire, demanding it stay in session to make sure that the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) is passed and Obama’s promised veto is overridden; and to pass Glass-Steagall as the first step towards ensuring that the U.S. joins the World Land-Bridge global recovery project—with Barack Obama removed from the Presidency.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Russia Charges Obama Administration with Defending ISIS, after U.S. Deadly Bombing of Syrian Troops

Sept. 18 (EIRNS)—Russia called an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) last night, insisting that the U.S. provide explanations of the Sept. 17 bombing run in which U.S. and Australian jets killed 62 Syrian soldiers in Deir ez-Zor. The Syrian troops had for weeks been battling ISIS troops which had the city under siege.

After the bombing but prior to the UNSC meeting, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blasted the Obama administration in no uncertain terms: “If previously we had suspicions that the Al-Nusra Front is protected this way, now, after today’s airstrikes on the Syrian army, we come to a really terrifying conclusion for the entire world: The White House is defending IS. Now there can be no doubts about that.” She continued: “We demand explanations from Washington—whether this is a deliberate policy to support IS or a mistake.”

After the closed-door UNSC meeting, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power was at her witchy best in comments to the press. She began by quickly dismissing the incident in 30 seconds: “If we determine that we did indeed strike Syrian military personnel, that was not our intention and we of course regret the loss of life.” She then spent the next 15 minutes excoriating Russia for “hypocrisy” and “grandstanding” for daring to bring the issue to the UNSC. “Why are we having this meeting tonight? It is a diversion from what is happening on the ground…. Russia really needs to stop the cheap point-scoring and the grandstanding and the stunts and focus on what matters.”

The U.S. Central Command (Centcom) issued a more measured, but also implausible, explanation: “Coalition forces believed they were striking a Daesh fighting position that they had been tracking for a significant amount of time before the strike…. The coalition airstrike was halted immediately when coalition officials were informed by Russian officials that it was possible the personnel and vehicles targeted were part of the Syrian military…. Coalition forces would not intentionally strike a known Syrian military unit.”

Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin responded to the situation in comments to the press after the UNSC meeting: “It is highly suspicious that the U.S. chose to conduct this particular airstrike at this time…. It was quite significant and not accidental that it happened just two days before the Russian-American arrangements were supposed to come into full force.” Asked if this spelled the end of the ceasefire deal, Churkin stated: “This is a very big question mark. I would be very interested to see how Washington is going to react. If what Ambassador Power has done today is any indication of their possible reaction, then we are in serious trouble. Who is in charge in Washington? Is it the White House or the Pentagon? Because we have heard statements from the Pentagon which simply fly in the face of what we have heard from President Obama and Secretary Kerry.”

The Syrian Foreign Ministry statement was also explicit: “This attack is deliberate and the U.S. has plotted it in order to implement its strategy in continuing the terrorist war against the Syrian army… [It] highlights the coordination between this terrorist organization [ISIS] and the U.S.”

Lyndon LaRouche today commented on these developments, emphasizing that Obama is clinically insane and is planning to launch warfare. He is crazy and a real threat, LaRouche stated, but indicated he didn’t think Obama can pull it off. “Obama always does these kinds of things: he commits an atrocity, and then tries to deny responsibility for it. The charges coming from Russian and Syrian authorities are important and constitute a challenge to Obama’s intentions.”

House of Commons Report on Libya War: Damning Evidence on Obama behind Regime Change

Sept. 16 (EIRNS)—The same “scathing” report on the Libyan war by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee that forced former Prime Minister David Cameron to resign from his Parliament seat under charges of enabling ISIS to come into being and carrying out a regime change war based on faked intelligence, nails Barack Obama as the one actually responsible for the policy of regime change. Cameron quit the House of Commons on Sept. 12th, one day before the release of the report that found him responsible for the unnecessary war in Libya, which was aimed at regime change, which handed the country over to the jihadists, and set the world on a course of war with Russia and China.

The evidence on Obama is damning, and the U.S. media has been completely silent about it.

In an April 14, 2011 op-ed in the New York Times, referenced by MP Crispin Blunt, Chairman of the House of Commons Committee, co-authors Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Cameron demanded regime change:

“[S]o long as Qaddafi is in power, NATO must maintain its operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds. Then a genuine transition from dictatorship to an inclusive constitutional process can really begin. … In order for that transition to succeed, Qaddafi must go and go for good,” Obama and the others wrote.

However, the Parliamentary report found: “If the primary object of the coalition intervention was the urgent need to protect civilians in Benghazi, then this objective was achieved in March 2011 in less than 24 hours. This meant that a limited intervention to protect civilians drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change by military means.”

In the section titled, “United States,” the report says that Obama believed a “no fly zone” was insufficient and wanted the policy of bombing the Libyan government’s ground forces and winning the war using “all necessary means.”

“Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, pointed out:

“The United States was instrumental in extending the terms of Resolution 1973 beyond the imposition of a no-fly zone to include the authorization of all necessary measures to protect civilians. … In practice, this led to the imposition of a no-drive zone and the assumed authority to attack the entire Libyan Government command and communications network.”

In his testimony, Lord William Hague of Richmond, who was British Foreign Secretary in 2011, said that it was the Obama Administration that changed the UN resolution backed by Cameron and the British from “no-fly zone” to “all necessary measures.”

Hague denied, under repeated questioning, that there had been any private promises to Russia that regime change was not the objective of the resolution, but in testimony gloated, “Russia decided to abstain, probably to their subsequent regret.”

When Qaddafi was not only overthrown, but also later brutally butchered in a jihadi assassination in October 2011, Lyndon LaRouche put out a statement, “Obama’s Murder of Qaddafi Is a Deadly Threat to World Peace,” specifying that the target of Obama and the British was China and Russia.

U.S. ECONOMIC & POLITICAL

Congress Must Remain in Session To Pass Glass-Steagall and JASTA

Sept. 17 (EIRNS)—Barack Obama has until this Friday, Sept. 23, to veto JASTA, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, and the expectation is that he will veto it at the last minute, hoping that he can get both Houses of Congress out of session before they can override his veto. His hope is that it will be easier for him to get the votes he needs against JASTA when Congress reconvenes after the November Presidential elections.

In reporting these possibilities, the Sept. 16 edition of Politico and the Sept. 15 New York Times note that Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has been in Washington lobbying Senators, and they finger Bob Corker (R-TN) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) as particularly likely to change their votes under pressure.

Lindsey Graham’s statements after meeting al-Jubeir are particularly corrupt and absurd. To Politico, Graham said, “It’s a delicate situation. Nobody wants to be seen as opposing justice for the 9/11 families, but at the end of the day we have a world to manage, and right now the world is not being well-managed.” Graham expanded on his orders from al-Jubeir to the New York Times. “They made it very clear to us that this is a hostile act. This is an odd situation. The 9/11 families are high on everyone’s list to be taken care of. But it comes at a time when Saudi Arabia believes America is not a reliable ally.”

Lyndon LaRouche commented that, “We’ve expected Obama to intervene in this process. It’s inevitable. He’s a faker; he always lies; he lies in the courts, and he’s killing people. We’ve had a mass assassination of people in the Manhattan area, and therefore we cannot allow any overlooking of the law in the case of President Obama. Otherwise, people of the United States must be mobilized against this President. We want to get quick justice on this thing, and force the issue; don’t let them bounce around it. The President is prohibited from trying to suspend the proceedings…. We should bring this to a head stubbornly, because the issue is overripe for closure,” LaRouche concluded.

Bomb Explosions Strike New York City and New Jersey

Sept. 18 (EIRNS)—Right after last week’s commemorations of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and just days before the start of the UN General Assembly in New York City this week, an explosive device blew up Saturday evening Sept. 17 in Manhattan, on busy 23rd St. near 6th Ave. Preliminary reports indicate that the device exploded in a dumpster, and 29 people were injured, one seriously, but none with life-threatening injuries. A few hours later, police found a second device nearby on 27th St. near 7th Ave., which had not detonated. It was removed by the bomb squad and taken for examination by robots. A photo of the device began to circulate on the internet, which the New York Police Department (NYPD) said was authentic.

New York City Mayor Bill Di Blasio told the press that the investigation is still in its early stages, but as of now there is no confirmation that this was a “terrorist” incident, although it was believed to be “intentional”—a statement which Lyndon LaRouche characterized as “fuzzy.” New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo was more direct: “A bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism.” Mayor Di Blasio also said there is no credible and impending terrorist threat in New York City more broadly, and announced stepped-up security measures, including for this week’s UN General Assembly meeting.

Earlier on Saturday morning, a pipe bomb placed in a garbage can blew up in Seaside, New Jersey, right before the beginning of a Marine Corps charity marathon that had been fortunately delayed. A couple of additional pipe bombs wired to the exploded one apparently did not detonate. No one was injured in that incident.

And in a third such incident, a man stabbed nine people at a mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota on Saturday night, before being shot dead by an off-duty police officer. An ISIS-linked website took credit for the attack, saying the assailant was a “soldier of the Islamic State.”

Lyndon LaRouche commented that, although no firm conclusions can yet be drawn from the known facts, there is a good chance that these were authentic terrorist tactics being deployed, even if not the kind of full action seen lately in European nations. We must be on alert for all developments on this front, he stated.

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Epoch Times Asks, ‘Is Deutsche Bank the Next Lehman Brothers?’

Sept. 18 (EIRNS)—The Justice Department announcement Friday, Sept. 16, that it would seek a $14 billion fine from Deutsche Bank, for the bank’s fraudulent behavior in selling mortgage-backed securities, shook the bank—and the entire trans-Atlantic banking structure—as Deutsche Bank lost 8% of its market capitalization that day. That fine would represent two-thirds of Deutsche Bank’s $20.2 billion bank capitalization, placing it close to bankruptcy.

But that is merely the front-end of Deutsche Bank’s current problems. Deutsche has the world’s largest derivatives holdings, estimated at between $70 and $80 billion, which was exposed inEpoch Times publication on Sept. 9, in an article aptly headlined, “Is Deutsche Bank the Next Lehman Brothers?” and reprinted the next day in the Seeking Alpha website. Epoch Times quoted Reggie Middleton, head of Veritaseum company, who stated, “Deutsche Bank is the equivalent of an American B-rated horror movie…. I read the Deutsche Bank balance sheet, and I say Deutsche Bank has an excess amount of balance sheet liabilities, and their derivative exposure is extremely dangerous.”

The challenge is the breadth of the crisis. The website Wolf Street reports Sept. 17 in an article, “Italian Banking Crisis Turns Into Mission Impossible,” that Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), the world’s oldest surviving bank, with €45 billion ($50.4 billion) in bad debt, is having a difficult time lining up a capital infusion of €3-5 billion. Since 2014, MPS has had two prior capital infusions—in which outside investors put capital into the bank—and both times, the bank failed. Even though the City of London wants to take over and further control MPS, as EIR’s Claudio Celani has pointed out, it is finding it difficult to find one or two banks that would do so. Lurking close to the surface is Italy’s Unicredit, which has €80 billion in bad debt, which it has not been able to dispose of, Wolf Street reports.

Saudi Economy Falls Deeper Into Complete Breakdown

Sept. 18 (EIRNS)—The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which under its British masters, has masterminded global Wahhabi terror, has lurched into a new phase of profound economic disintegration— the victim of its own incompetent self-destructive policy. As Saudi oil revenues have plunged, the nation has slashed state-sponsored construction and other economic activity by an unprecedented level. The crisis has become so severe that in August, India’s Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj, had to ship in tens of thousands of pounds of food to laid-off Indian migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, who were facing a life-threatening food crisis, and to arrange their repatriation.

In early 2015, the Saudis ramped up their oil production to record volume as a weapon against Russia, and secondarily, against U.S. shale oil producers. Ultimately, the vengeful Saudis damaged themselves. With the consequent fall of the world oil price by more than 70%, the Saudis blew out their own budget. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Saudi net oil exports fell from $247 billion in 2014, to $130 billion in 2015, to a projected level of 2016, based on the first five months’ activity, of $94 billion. That’s a slashing of oil export revenues of $153 billion or two-thirds from the level of only two years ago.

Yet nine-tenths of the revenues of the Saudi internal budget come from oil exports. The Saudis took two simultaneous actions. First, they drew down—that is, sold off—foreign reserve holdings, reducing them from a level of $737 billion in 2014, to a projected level of $580 billion today.  The IMF’s Regional Economic Outlook has projected that Saudi Arabia may run out of financial assets to support spending by 2020. (The Kingdom plans a $10 billion international bond sale in October.) Second, they axed nearly all state-sponsored economic projects, some quite necessary for the economy. Construction contracts for the country fell by 65% for the second quarter of 2016, compared to the second quarter of 2015. The largest construction company, the Saudi Bin Laden Group, which employed 200,000 workers, fired 50,000 in March. Another large construction company, the Saudi Oger Group followed suit.

This produced a devastating effect. A significant majority of the Saudi workforce are foreign workers. At least 16,000 mostly Indian and Pakistani workers, abandoned by the Bin Laden and Oger construction companies, have not been paid in eight months. They were waiting for back pay. They were living crammed eight into a tiny room, in buildings that sometimes had no functioning air conditioners, where temperatures reach 122°F. They could not leave until their employers returned their passports to them. In August, Indian External Affairs Minister Swaraj shipped 34,000 pounds of food to the stranded, starving Indian workers living in migrant camps. As of late August, New Delhi was seeking to repatriate migrant Indians stranded by the Saudi firms.

Lyndon LaRouche commented that these actions conform to actual Saudi tactics—it is their practice to do this sort of thing.

Crumbling Europe All-Too-Visible at Bratislava Summit

Sept. 17 (EIRNS)—The EU-27 informal summit (without the U.K.) which was held in the Slovakian capital Bratislava yesterday, was hardly the show of “unity” that German Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to demonstrate. The main conflict areas were removed from the summit agenda and potential decisions were postponed until the Rome Summit in March 2017, which is to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the 1957 European Treaty of Rome. Many commentaries on the summit note that when Merkel tries to demonstrate the “Franco-German team” these days, everybody is aware that French President François Hollande is a lame duck, and cannot be considered an indicator of where France will go in the near future. Moreover, Merkel’s attempt to form a trio with Italy failed miserably, as Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi publicly refused to hold a joint press conference with Merkel and Hollande.

The Italians are justifiably angry at the refusal of the other EU states, particularly Germany, to stop celebrating a supposed “solution” to the refugee problem with Turkey, given that a quarter-million refugees have come to Italy so far this year, via the mid-Mediterranean route from North Africa. Italy and the other southern European states also want a change in the austerity policy of the EU and Eurozone, so that money can be spent for job-creation programs and production incentives. Merkel and her Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble oppose any changes, and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s giant “European Investment Fund” of a proposed €500 billion is pie in the sky, with no more than €25 billion committed by EU member states on paper so far.

SCIENCE & INFRASTRUCTURE

Peru Takes a Second Step into Space Technology

Sept. 18 (EIRNS)—The PeruSAT-1 satellite launched for Peru from the French launch center at Kourou, French Guiana three days ago, sets a new standard for Earth remote sensing capabilities in Ibero-America, and is at the leading edge of space technology internationally. Peru has been purchasing Earth remote sensing satellite data from other countries’ satellites, as the first step in using space technology, but now they will own and operate their own satellite, and process the data for a variety of applications. Brian Zutta Salazar, a scientist at the Peruvian Ministry of the Environment, explained toNature that “in Peru, there’s definitely a desire to generate your own data.” The technology can be tailored to provide the data most useful for Peru’s purposes. The nearly 1,000 pound, $200 million satellite was built by Europe’s Airbus Defense and Space for CONIDA, the Peru Space Agency.

PeruSAT-1 will be able to produce images at 70 centimeters resolution, about the size of a standard chessboard, Nature explains. By comparison, NASA’s Landsat satellites deliver images at 30 meters resolution, and Europe’s Sentinel-2 satellites beam down images at resolution of about 10 meters. Only commercial systems have a higher resolution. Although Brazil and Chile also have remote sensing satellites, these are at a low resolution. As the article notes, “PeruSAT-1 will catapult Peru into the lead among South American countries when it comes to Earth observation.” In addition, Landsat delivers images of the same points on Earth every eight days, but PeruSAT-1 will return to the same region every three days.

OTHER

The Philippines Is No Longer America’s ‘Little Brown Brothers’

Sept. 17 (EIRNS)—Speaking at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington Sept. 15, Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay repeated President Rodrigo Duterte’s stern words to the Obama administration that the Philippines will no longer accept lectures on human rights, foreign policy or domestic policy. He turned the table on the U.S., arguing that the fight for human rights was at the core of the nation’s battle for independence.

Summing it up during the Q&A, Yasay said: “Even before America became a colonial power in the Philippines … the Filipinos had already fully understood the sanctity of human life, the dignity of human life…. These have already been well established in the minds of Filipinos and this was precisely at the core of our struggle for independence and our right of self-determination. So it is in this context that I am asking our American friends and our American leaders to look at our aspirations. We cannot forever be the little brown brothers of America.”

This is a reference to the infamous statement by America’s imperialist President William Howard Taft while serving as the first governor general of the Philippines from 1901 to 1904. Taft told President William McKinley, in regard to the Philippines, that “America’s little brown brothers would take 50 to 100 years of close supervision to develop anything resembling Anglo-Saxon political principles and skills.”

Yasay added: “We have to develop, we have to grow and become the big brother of our own people, of the next generation of Filipinos.” Clearly in reference to Obama’s intended lecture to Duterte on human rights, which Duterte rejected, Yasay said: “You do not go to the Philippines and say I’m going to give you something, I’m going to help you develop, I’m going to help you grow—but this [is] the checklist that you must comply with.”