EDITORIAL

Bush and Obama War Crimes Exposed—Trump Should Agree

Nov. 22 (EIRNS)—The following statement, by Republican Senator Richard H. Black of the Virginia Senate, came in response to a warning from Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) that U.S. support and collaboration with Saudi Arabia in the criminal war against Yemen was putting U.S. military personnel at risk of prosecution for war crimes. Senator Black was the former Chief of the Criminal Law Division in the Office of the Judge Advocate General at the Pentagon.

“I agree with Rep. Lieu’s legal analysis. However, I believe the more practical aspect of this is the legal exposure of our most senior officials, who directed our servicemen’s actions. Under the precedent set by the American War Crimes Tribunal of Japanese Gen. [Tomoyuki] Yamashita following World War II, the senior commander is criminally liable for generalized criminal misconduct by his subordinates. This applies to conduct of which he knew or should have known.

“America has widely flouted international norms of conduct in its wars of aggression against Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now Yemen.  Some acts appear to constitute common law crimes— such as our refusal to accept the surrender of Colonel Qaddafi when he offered to leave Libya. The U.S., Great Britain, and France reportedly conferred before deciding to ignore his offer to abdicate, and facilitated his murder instead.

“By flouting settled norms of wartime conduct, the U.S. has severely undermined its moral authority and diminished its power across the globe. While I support a robust defense, we gain nothing by fighting wars to advance globalism—particularly when such wars violate the Law of Land Warfare.”

President Donald Trump is increasingly indicating that he agrees. His appointment of Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.) is one such indication—General Flynn, as then head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, famously warned Obama that his adventure in Syria, as also in Libya, was supporting the establishment of a “caliphate” of the most extreme, Saudi-funded Islamic terrorists. General Flynn also ridiculed Obama’s massive drone assassination program, which so delights the killer president, as militarily worse than useless, as each kill “just made them a martyr, it just created a new reason to fight us even harder.” Like Trump, General Flynn advocates working with Russia to defend the Syrian state and the world against the terrorists.

Trump also met on Monday with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), with indications that she is being considered as U.S. Ambassador to the UN. Gabbard, a veteran of the Iraq war, has been an outspoken critic of Obama’s perpetual warfare, and his failure to combat terrorism in favor of “regime change” against secular governments. Contrast that with Obama’s UN Ambassador Samantha Power, who has joined the braying dinosaurs by ranting at the UN today that she would “bring to justice” the Syrian commanders who have been leading the counter-terror operations in their country.

The world is in a revolutionary transition. European leaders who followed Obama and the British dictates to impose sanctions on Russia and prepare for war are dropping like flies. The election of François Fillon, a pro-Russian candidate, in the French Republican Party primary this week, follows the election of pro-Russian Presidents in Bulgaria and Moldova last week. At the same time, the European banks, with Deutsche Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland in the lead, are hanging by a thread and could bring the entire Western banking system down on any given day— unless the U.S. Congress comes to its senses and imposes Glass-Steagall, now, without waiting for the new U.S. government inauguration in January.

Even more crucial is the fight to restore creative thinking in the Western nations, after decades of intellectual poison from the violence and perversion of Hollywood and the rock-drug-sex counter-culture.

Three years ago on this date, on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Schiller Institute, founded by Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, presented a memorial concert for JFK featuring the Mozart Requiem Mass in D Minor in the Washington, D.C. area, followed on Jan. 19, 2014, by a repeat performance at the Holy Cross Cathedral in Boston, the site of the Solemn Pontifical Requiem Mass in memory of JFK celebrated by Richard Cardinal Cushing 50 years earlier at the request of Mrs. Kennedy, where the same profound expression of classical beauty had been presented and watched on television around the world. It is precisely the identification of beauty with truth which has been lost in the West, and must be restored, to bring the world together for peace, through shared and cooperative development.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Trump Pledges U.S. Will Quit TPP on His First Day in Office

Nov. 22 (EIRNS)—U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced yesterday, that his administration will abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) treaty on his first day in office, as one of his administration’s measures to increase employment in the U.S. “On trade, I’m going to issue a notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Trump said defining the deal as a “potential disaster” for the U.S.  “Instead, we will negotiate fair, bilateral trade deals that brings jobs and industry back on to American shores.”

In response to his statement on pulling the U.S. out of the TPP, Japanese government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters today that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the deal “has no meaning without the United States—the fundamental balance of benefits would collapse, and similarly renegotiating is impossible.” The TPP had passed Japan’s lower house, but had not yet passed in the upper house.

In his same remarks yesterday, Trump said, “On energy, I will cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy, including shale energy and clean coal, creating millions of high-paying jobs.” He continued, “On regulation, I will formulate a law, which says that for every one regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated.” He described his agenda as “putting America first,” which also includes producing steel, making cars, promoting innovation in the U.S. and, “creating wealth and jobs for American workers.”

He also plans to impose a five-year ban on Executive branch officials becoming lobbyists after they leave the administration, and a lifetime ban on Executive branch officials lobbying on behalf of foreign governments.

Russian Expert Stephen Cohen: Advice to Trump on Reaching Détente

Nov. 22 (EIRNS)—Russian expert Dr. Stephen Cohen of New York University and Princeton, a contributing editor to The Nation, offered President-elect Trump this advice on the John Batchelor Show Nov. 15, which he covered in The Nation Nov. 16. Cohen makes these points:

Détente has a long 20th-century history. Its major breakthroughs were initiated by Republican Presidents: Eisenhower, Nixon, and “most spectacularly, Ronald Reagan in 1985 [sic—rather 1983, with the SDI, as Lyndon LaRouche’s EIR has proven].” Cohen says four prerequisites are required: 1) a determined U.S. President who will fight against a mainstream opposition; 2) one who can rally support by prominent U.S. figures who did not support his candidacy; 3) who has a few like-minded aides at his side, and 4) who has a pro-détente partner in the Kremlin.

Cohen points out that Trump seems determined. Trump repeatedly called for cooperation with Russia for the sake of U.S. national security, and “he alone refused to indulge in the rampant fact-free vilification of Putin.” Trump seems even “contemptuous” of the foreign policy establishment. It isn’t clear, says Cohen, how many in either party will support détente, or whether he will find in his inner circle a secretary of state and ambassador to Moscow who will assist him in this pursuit. But Putin is certainly ready to be a partner, says Cohen.

Cohen warned that the new Cold War is more dangerous than the preceding 40-year Cold War, because in three of its current fronts— Ukraine, the Baltic region, and Syria—hot war is possible.

Exxon Singles Out Rockefeller Foundation To Use Green Suits To Ruin Company—‘Prince Charles Project’

Nov. 22 (EIRNS)—In the wake of the Trump election, as prospects grow for rollback of green insanity, ExxonMobil is making headlines for its fightback against green lawsuits, by going beyond defensive court action, to now single out the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation—funders of global-warming lies—for conspiracy to harm the core business of target companies. Exxon spokesmen, legal filings and other documents, are making the accusation.

On one level, this is ironic, because five generations ago, Standard Oil—the predecessor of Exxon—was founded by the Rockefellers. But on the broadest level, today’s dirty Rockefeller operations are just one part of the web of British Crown dirty tricks internationally, to destroy productive capacity. Specifically, Prince Charles has an outfit to promote anti-carbon lies and lawsuits against energy companies.

Exxon, like coal and other carbon companies, has been targetted by lawsuits from state officials in New York and elsewhere, and by a shareholders action filed just last week, claiming that the company is liable for having known that carbon emissions are causing climate change, but having withheld this information from shareholders and the public, and further, having funded researchers to deny that man-made emissions cause climate change.

Peabody Energy, the largest coal company in the United States, was brought under similar green assault, and after first trying to settle with New York State in November 2015, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2016.

Now ExxonMobil is naming names. It is specifically singling out for culpability the Rockefeller Foundation, for its record of funding and orchestrating charges against Exxon, through such agencies as Columbia University’s Energy & Environmental Reporting Project, and InsideClimate News, a media news agency. These entities issued reports last year against Exxon.

This operation to target Exxon is, in fact, the signature activity fostered by networks associated with the “Accounting for Sustainability” (A4S) outfit, set up under Prince Charles in 2004. Then on Nov. 27, 2015, at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) Summit in Malta, before the Paris COP21 Summit, Charles announced a new hit-squad agency, funded by A4S, called the “Commonwealth Climate and Law Initiative.” Its specialty is to profile and instigate lawsuits against energy companies.

The CCLI’s mandate is “to publicize and develop laws” under which companies and their directors can be sued for violating restrictions on carbon emissions, opposing the climate-change hoax, failing to report how their financial returns will be hit by environmental costs, etc. One of the three groups that make up Charles’s CCLI is Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprises and the Environment, which asserts that company directors and pensions trustees must be held liable if they don’t take action to deter “anthropogenic climate change.”

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Financial Hit Men Target South Africa’s Nuclear Program

Nov. 22 (EIRNS)—International credit-rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, have threatened South Africa with downgrading its currency, the rand, to “junk,” if it does not scrap its plan to build nuclear power plants. South Africa’s nuclear plan has been under continuous attack by Greens and the country’s Finance Ministry for years. Now the international financial institutions have weighed in directly, in an attempt to blackmail Jacob Zuma’s government into dropping nuclear. It is reported by Bloomberg that on the heels of the nuclear pullback, “the rand strengthened the most of major currencies against the dollar.”

Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pattersson told reporters yesterday that the revised energy plan delays the operation of a new nuclear plant to 2037. The plan that the government had promoted previously had proposed that date more than a decade earlier, in 2023. In total, the original plan was for 9,600 MW of new nuclear capacity, to all be online by 2029.

Although the economic slowdown and lower growth in demand is cited as one reason for the delay, South Africa still had 100 days last year with power cuts, due to demand outstripping supply. There would have been more days of outage, but the economy itself is stagnant, with lowered demand.

Bloomberg reports that the state-owned utility Eskom said it could use the $10.7 billion in reserves that it will accumulate over the next 10 years to build the new reactors. This kind of austerity “self-financing” approach is not even necessary in its own terms, since the Russians, at least, would offer South Africa long-term, low-interest loans to finance the project, obviating the need to go to the financial markets at all, or scrape together funding from “savings.”

Should the BRICS’ New Development Bank and AIIB-financed infrastructure projects start construction in South Africa, there would be an immediate shortage of power, and immediate need to accelerate the nuclear program, with the financial backing to do it.

Global Economic Recession Hits Nuclear Power Projects in Vietnam

Nov. 22 (EIRNS)—In Vietnam, where preliminary construction work under contract to Russia had begun, its “National Assembly has voted to scrap plans to build two multibillion-dollar nuclear power plants,” Energy Voice reported. The vote was taken in a closed session after delegates discussed a government proposal to abandon the project, earlier this month, the industry daily wrote.

Russia planned to supply two units for a power plant project in the southern Ninh Thuan province. Its launch was planned for 2020 before Vietnam asked to move the start of construction to that year. In early November, Hanoi announced its decision to withdraw from the contract, due to a tight fiscal situation, Sputnik reported. Such a decision could certainly be reversed, if the world economic collapse were turned around.

In South Africa, the Pretoria government announced yesterday that it will delay the operation of a new nuclear plant by more than a decade, to avoid attacks by the financial hit men (see accompanying slug).

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Ecuador’s Yachay Science City: Creating ‘Knowledge as an Infinite Good’

Nov. 22 (EIRNS)—On the occasion of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit Nov. 17-18, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa hailed China’s financing of the Yachay “City of Knowledge”—yachay is the Quechua word for “knowledge”—as “what I consider the most important project in our country’s history, not because of its dollar amount, but because of its significance: the City of Knowledge, Yachay, which includes a world-class university, is dedicated to fostering innovation and the development of the hard sciences.”

Yachay is the first planned city built in South America since the 1960 construction of Brazil’s capital, Brasilia. Its purpose, according to Ecuadorean experts and participants, is to create a new generation of scientists and engineers dedicated to building “a new economy based on knowledge, science and technology,” the Andes news service reported last July.

The project is also international. In an August 2015 interview with Radio Universidad Chile, Yachay’s Technical Manager Fernando Cornejo described the city as “an emblematic project of Unasur,” the Union of South American Nations, designed to expand knowledge and development of science and technology throughout South America, to help it achieve its “second Independence.” It’s noteworthy that Russia is also involved in Yachay, building a vaccine-production plant there, while China is providing technology to the science city that Bolivia is building in Cochabamba.

Cornejo, who previously served as Deputy Science and Technology Minister in the Correa government, explained that the principle guiding the project, is that “we have changed the neoliberal conception of knowledge as a finite good, to one of knowledge as an infinite good that can be shared, is open and collaborative.”  Knowledge, he continued, “is linked to independence, that is, overcoming the status of domination to which our nations have been subjected.” The challenge for Latin America, he said, is to transform itself into “a producer of knowledge.”

According to Cornejo, there are academics, students and researchers from 57 countries participating in the Yachay project. In addition to the Yachay Tech University, all of Ecuador’s twelve national research institutes will be located there, along with an industrial park, the Superior Technological Institute, 37 high-tech companies, schools, hospitals, agro-industrial enterprises, and much more.

Cornejo emphasized that a project of the magnitude of Yachay could only be carried out by the state, not the private sector, although the latter will collaborate with the state. “It implied thinking big, in [terms of] megaprojects that would have a direct influence on the productive sector. “ It also implied “a change in the mentality of the Ecuadorean and Latin American human being, since a change in the productive matrix [of society] can only occur with a change in the cognitive matrix.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Samantha Power Throws Fit against Syria at the UN Security Council

Nov. 22 (EIRNS)—At the UN Security Council yesterday, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power fantasized about bringing Syrian Army commanders to heel before a war crimes tribunal, by reciting the names of 13 officers, who, in her mind, have clearly already been tried and convicted and merely await sentencing and execution. She claimed that the 13 commanders that she named had been involved in killing and injuring civilians since 2011 through air and ground assaults, and detaining and torturing civilians.

“The United States will not let those who have commanded units involved in these actions hide anonymously behind the facade of the Assad regime,” Power told the UNSC, reported Reuters. “Those behind such attacks must know that we and the international community are watching their actions, documenting their abuses, and one day, they will be held accountable,” she threatened.

Russian Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Vladimir Safronkov responded by demanding that Power similarly name the terrorists who have committed crimes against Syrian civilians. “You went as far as naming Syrian commanders and generals. But if you claim to be unbiased, why don’t we hear the names of the terrorists as well? Who will deal with them?” Safronkov asked. Safronkov also stood his ground that the UN Security Council must not be hypocritical on the matter of accountability in Syria. According to Sputnik, he explained that the UNSC  must also not forget the golden standard of presumption of innocence, and that it is up to a court to prove who is guilty.

Power’s outburst apparently followed a report by UN aid director Stephen O’Brien, who briefed the Security Council about people under siege in Syria, which he estimated at 850,000.

Do Jihadis Now Have Shoulder-Fired Anti-Aircraft Missiles in Syria?

Nov. 22 (EIRNS)—It appears that at least one jihadi group in Syria may have acquired shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, the so-called MANPADS. Middle East Eye published images and twitter messages, yesterday, showing members of Ansar al Islam, a faction of the Free Syrian Army, practicing with Russian-made SA-7 man-portable air defense weapons and claiming that they have a “good number” of these weapons, which were being deployed among Ansar and Free Syrian Army forces to counter government aircraft in Daraa and Quneitra in southern Syria.

If this report is true, then they likely were shipped to Syria via Jordan. Middle East Eye news agency surmises that the weapons were delivered either in contravention of U.S. policy or that U.S. policy has been relaxed to allow the delivery of these weapons. Middle East Eye says, however, that no SA-7s or similar weapons have been shipped to the north of the country for the jihadis fighting in Aleppo. The SA-7 dates back to the 1960s, in its earliest versions, and Russian combat aircraft are equipped with countermeasures to defend against them. If they are, indeed, arriving in Syria in any numbers, they might prove to be a problem for the Syrian air force, however.

Federation Councillor: Russia Has Missiles in Kaliningrad To Counter NATO Missile Defense Installations

Nov. 22 (EIRNS)—Senator Viktor Ozerov, chairman of the Defense and Security Committee of the Federation Council (upper house), told RIA Novosti yesterday, that Russia would be targeting NATO’s European ballistic missile defense (BMD) installations from its Kaliningrad exclave, wedged between Poland and Lithuania.

“One of the reasons why Russia opposed the deployment of the American ABM [anti-ballistic missile] system in Europe was the concern that this infrastructure may be quickly converted to deploy strike systems, in particular land-based cruise missiles. These concerns are being confirmed today,” he said, reports RT.

The NATO Romanian and Polish installations both employ the U.S. Navy Mk. 41 vertical launch system which, in its shipboard installation at least, is capable of launching Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as anti-aircraft and ant-missile missiles. Therefore, the Russians believe, the NATO installations are in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty and represent a direct threat to Russia.

Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin Assures Russia Will Reinforce Resilience of Syrian People

Nov. 22 (EIRNS)—Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin was in Damascus today, where he held meetings with President Bashar al-Assad, Prime Minister Imad Khamis, Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Walid al Moallem, and a host of other Syrian officials. Rogozin, who was in Syria in his capacity as co-chair  of the Russian-Syrian commission on trade and economic, scientific and technical cooperation—his counterpart Moallem is the other co-chair—stressed in his meetings that the main objective of the military, economic, and political support provided by Russia to the Syrian government and people is to reinforce the factors of their resilience against the terrorism that overstepped Syria to spread to many parts of the world.

“The Syrian side has many requests on how to support life of the state and the citizens who were deprived of traditional means of earning money,” Rogozin told TASS. “Syria used to be a country that sold oil, grain, and was a successful state. Now it has neither oil, nor grain, nor many other products to meet the demands of the population,” he said.

Rogozin told Khamis, in a separate meeting, that the success of the military operation in Syria will not be completed “without supporting the economic life of the citizens in order to continue the work and achieve victory.” Later, Syria’s official news agency SANA reports, the Syrian-Russian joint commission held a session of economic talks during which the two sides initialed three protocols of cooperation in the customs field.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

NASA’s Bolden and Roscosmos’ Komarov Emphasize the Importance of Cooperation in Space

Nov. 22 (EIRNS)—NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who was in Russia for the launch of the next Soyuz to deliver crew to the International Space Station (ISS), said on Nov. 19th at a press conference with Roscosmos Director Igor Komarov: “We on the International Space Station are a model for the rest of the world to follow,” referring to the U.S.-Russia cooperation. He added, “The political and diplomatic changes and trauma that goes on down here on Earth, I think we can survive that.” It is often pointed out that manned space cooperation is a necessarily close working relationship, as astronauts and cosmonauts have explained that each crew member’s life depends upon the other’s.

NASA officials have previously indicated that (regardless of the ranting and raving from congressmen like John McCain), American astronauts will continue to fly on Russian Soyuz vehicles even after there are American “commercial” crew vehicles flying to the ISS. Komarov concurred, stating, “I believe that it is very important for all participants of the program to have alternative transportation means to the station.” This need for redundancy became obvious following the Columbia Space Shuttle accident in 2003, and the stand-down of the fleet of orbiters. If there had been no Soyuz, the crew would have had to abandon the station. Komarov indicated that just as astronauts will continue to fly on the Soyuz, Russian cosmonauts would also be flying on the U.S. commercial vehicles.

First Manned Expedition Should Fly to Mars with Nuclear-Powered Rocket Engines, Russians Say

Nov. 22 (EIRNS)—The head of the Space Gamma-Spectroscopy Laboratory of Russia’s prestigious Space Research Institute, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Igor Mitrofanov, told TASS that the first manned expedition may fly to Mars, through international cooperation in 2040-50, and that the spacecraft would have to have nuclear-powered engines. “A manned expedition to Mars is not an easy task. In my estimate, technically we’ll be able to implement it approximately in 2040-2050. This Martian expedition will most probably be performed on the basis of consolidated international efforts,” he said.

“A flight to Mars aboard [today’s] spacecraft must continue for quite a long time, for about half a year, and the radiation dose received by the crew may considerably exceed permissible levels,” the scientist said. At the same time, it is irrational to create a big spaceship with powerful radiation protection. Instead, it is simply necessary to fly to the Red Planet quicker, in weeks rather than months.

“In the case of a quick flight, it is possible to choose the period of a relatively calm Sun [the basic source of radiation] while the accumulated dose from galactic cosmic rays will be quite permissible,” he stated. However, a Martian spacecraft needs nuclear-powered engines to develop great speed, and this requires new developments and considerable cost, Mitrofanov said.

Mitrofanov also proposed that infrastructure should be prepared on Mars before the arrival of the expedition, including a manned module with radiation protection of at least a meter-thick soil layer. Scientists are planning to test the elements of a Martian expedition within the framework of Russia’s manned lunar program, which is expected to be carried out after 2030. He said cosmonauts will spend a week or two in a lunar settlement, which has been created by robots-automats, called the Poligon (the practice ground), at one of the Moon’s polar areas.

“The first manned descent to the Moon will be a brief visit to the Poligon village of robots, and will last from one to two weeks, the duration of a lunar polar day,” Mitrofanov said.

“A manned module with radiation protection from cosmic rays and a life-support system based on lunar resources will be the main element of this infrastructure,” the scientist said. Before the lunar landing, cosmonauts will be working in near-Moon orbit aboard the spacecraft Federation, able to remotely control robots on the Moon’s surface from the spaceship.