Times of London chose to intervene in the politics of its former colony with an endorsement of Hillary for President! The Financial Times editorial reads: “Mrs. Clinton carries enough baggage to fill a Boeing 747. She is not trusted by the majority of voters. But she is manifestly more competent than Mr. Trump. … Despite her faults, Mrs. Clinton is eminently qualified to be the first woman elected to the White House.” Perhaps they should have added: eminently qualified to continue the Obama tradition of obediently following instructions from London and Wall Street.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche noted today that the endorsement from the British Empire’s Financial Times is the kiss of death to her campaign.

While the world is astonished at the lunacy of the U.S. election campaign, most of the nations on this Earth are proceeding to realign themselves with the new paradigm centered in Asia. China and Russia are building railroads, water projects, nuclear power plants, industrial infrastructure and more across Asia, Africa, Ibero-America, and even in Europe, while the U.S. and the EU are imposing austerity, drug addiction and increasing poverty upon themselves.

Which way will the U.S. go—a new world renaissance based on the collaboration of classical cultures and joint win-win development, or the British/Obama/Hillary rush to permanent, and perhaps thermonuclear war? These decisions will be made over the coming weeks. Now is the time to listen to the wise words of Lyndon LaRouche, as Mexican President José López Portillo once told his countrymen.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

The Empire’s Financial Times Gives ‘Kiss of Death’ Endorsement to Hillary Clinton

Oct. 31 (EIRNS)—Today the Financial Times of the City of London, in an unusual (but not unheard-of) public commentary on the U.S. Presidential race, chose to announce its endorsement of Hillary Clinton, in what could turn out to be the kiss-of-death to her campaign.

Announcing that “This is a moment for the renewal of American leadership,” the Financial Times sees only “one candidate [who] has the credentials” for the job: Hillary Clinton.” For a time when “international order of the past 70 years is fraying, maybe even breaking down,” Donald Trump is simply too unreliable, for the banks, to have at the helm. After all, as they see it, “The first role of the President is to be commander-in-chief, in charge of the world’s largest active nuclear arsenal.” Better to have Hillary who is willing to go to war with Russia, apparently.

The Times then proceeds to give Hillary some marching orders. “She would also be wise,” they advise, “to review her cynical U-turn on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, a vital building bloc in the liberal world trade order and a bridge to hard-pressed allies in Asia, notably Japan.”

So, although “she carries enough baggage to fill a Boeing 747,” they say, “she is manifestly more competent than Mr. Trump whose braggadocio, divisiveness and meanness are on daily display. Despite her faults, Mrs. Clinton is eminently qualified to be the first woman elected to the White House. She has the Financial Times endorsement.”

Another Black Eye for Obama’s Pivot to Asia, and War— Malaysia’s Najib Visits China

Oct. 31 (EIRNS)—Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is spending a full week in China beginning today. This is not really a “turn” towards China, as with the Philippines, since Najib has remained very close to China throughout his administration.

However, Malaysia does have conflicting claims with China in the South China Sea, and Obama and his neocon cohorts have repeatedly claimed that Chinese “aggression” was driving the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam to the U.S. for protection, a scam which has now been ripped to shreds through especially Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s visit to China, but also Vietnam’s close relations with Beijing.

Malaysia has already agreed to buy two coast guard vessels from China rather than from the U.S., and they clearly do not intend to use them to protect themselves from China. China is also likely to win its bid to build the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore high-speed rail line, and to build a new port on the Malacca Strait.

China, Philippines ‘Friendly Understanding’ Now Official on Fishing in ‘Traditional’ Areas

Oct. 31 (EIRNS)—Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s National Security Advisor Hermogenes Esperon confirmed today that Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping had reached a “friendly understanding” about fishing rights in the region around the Scarborough Shoal, the most contentious territorial issue between the two countries.

“The coast guard of China is there, but their navy is gone. And now our fishermen are no longer being accosted, no longer being forced out, so we can say things are now friendly,” Esperon said.

The Philippines Inquirer noted that Esperon had stressed that neither country dropped its claim to the shoal, with China insisting on its historical rights, while Duterte’s position was that the Philippines also had historical rights, and that it was also bolstered by the international tribunal ruling in July in The Hague. “He said the two leaders decided to sidestep the issue to repair frayed ties,” the Inquirer reported.

Fidel Ramos Quits as Philippine Special Envoy to China

Oct. 31 (EIRNS)—Fidel Ramos, the pal of George Shultz who played the local enforcer in the Philippines for Shultz’s coup against Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, and later as President turned the country over to the Western speculators, has now shown his colors—red, white, and blue, and also a tint of green.

Ramos had accepted the newly elected President Duterte’s request that he open talks with China, and made one trip to Hong Kong, which broke the ice of the strained relations under the former regime, but accomplished little.

Today he resigned as an envoy of Duterte, following Duterte’s trip to Beijing where he represented his country himself, with spectacular results. Ramos has been attacking Duterte regularly in the nation’s press over the previous weeks—specifically over Duterte’s refusal to abide by the Paris Global Warming accord, and Duterte’s actions to separate his nation’s policies from Washington dictates.

Ramos’ resignation is an impotent gesture, since Duterte has already taken over his own relationship with China.

Don’t be surprised if the neocons try to use their puppet Ramos to repeat his 1986 treason against Marcos in the new case of Duterte. But the world is a far different place today, with nearly the entire world turning away from Washington and reaching out to Beijing and the new paradigm of the Silk Road. Ramos, like Obama, is only isolating himself.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

UN’s Syria Envoy Charges Jihadists with War Crimes in Eastern Aleppo

Oct. 31 (EIRNS)—Jihadists’ indiscriminate shelling of eastern Aleppo with missiles and chemical weapons is tantamount to war crimes, said Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations Special Envoy on Syria, who declared himself “shocked and appalled” at the attacks launched by terrorists over the past three days on Aleppo’s civilian population. Even Amnesty International has called for an immediate halt to the shelling.

Over the past three days, a brutal offensive by Jabhat al-Nusra and its allies (including the so-called moderate opposition) to break the Syrian Army’s siege of eastern Aleppo has killed 84 people and wounded close to 300, Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported. In a statement issued today, the Syrian General Command charged that terrorists fired more than 100 mortar rounds, 50 Grad missiles, and 20 weaponized gas cylinders on residential areas of Aleppo, in addition to carrying out sniper attacks. Most of the casualties, it said, were women and children. On Sunday, Oct. 30, rebels advanced into the frontline neighborhood of al-Hamadaniyeh, in tanks and other armored vehicles, but also used suicide car bombs to breach Army defense lines. Several citizens were treated for respiratory problems and asphyxiation, as a result of poison gas.

As of this writing, the counter-offensive by Syrian Army forces has slowed the terrorists’ offensive, leaving them only partially in control of the Dahiyet al-Assad neighborhood they entered last Friday, Oct. 28.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned today that the two weeks during which Russia and Syria ceased airstrikes over Aleppo were more than enough time for the U.S. and its allies to force the “moderate” opposition to break with the terrorists. The failure to do this, he stated, now means that “our previous assessments need to be revised.” Earlier, if Russia said that it seemed that the U.S. and its allies were unable, or didn’t want, to separate the moderates from Jabhat al-Nusra, “then now we should say already that they do not really want to do this … we hope that the self-preservation instinct will prevail, as cozying up to terrorists and trying to use them for one’s own goals has never led to anything good.” Any militants still remaining in eastern Aleppo, Lavrov warned, will be considered accomplices of al-Nusra.

In one of the periodic mental lapses he suffers when repeating Obama’s lies, Secretary of State John Kerry told an audience at London’s Royal Institute for International Affairs/Chatham House today, that the Russians wanted to “bomb Aleppo to smithereens, claiming they are hitting terrorists, rather than accept the reality that there is an opposition there prepared to live by the ceasefire.” This is the very same “opposition” that UN Envoy de Mistura has today charged with committing acts tantamount to war crimes.

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Plunging Into a Dark New Dark Age: ‘Renewables’ Exceed Coal in New Power Brought Online

Oct. 31 (EIRNS)—“Renewables Beat Coal as Largest Source of Power Capacity,” says InfoMine industry website, in a misleading article that is a fallacy of composition. Nonetheless, the figures they cite are frightening.

The article reviews the 2015 investment in solar panels and wind turbines in a number of countries and globally, and reports that half of the new power capacity, 153 GW that came online worldwide was from renewable sources. Last year, a mind-boggling half-million solar panels were installed every day and two wind turbines went up every hour.

These figures come from a report by the International Energy Agency. The article’s author, Andrew Topf, admits that “enhanced policy support,” (read: billions of dollars in subsidies) is one of the “factors behind this remarkable achievement.”

Topf also mentions that “capacity” is not the same as electricity produced. Both a wind farm and a coal/gas/or nuclear plant may have a rated capacity of 500 MW, but the coal, gas, and nuclear plant would be producing that power 24/7, whereas the solar may have the same rated capacity, but obviously would not.

In that vein, in quoting costs, etc., the author neglects to mention that every megawatt of renewable electric generating capacity from wind and solar has to be backed up with (usually natural gas) non-intermittent generating capacity.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Helga Zepp-LaRouche Presents New Silk Road Paradigm at Peace Conference in Germany

Oct. 31 (EIRNS)—The Schiller Institute’s President Helga Zepp-LaRouche was a leading speaker at a panel on the future of relations between Europe, the United States and Russia, taking place on Oct. 29-30 at the conference “The Great Peace” in Auerstedt, Germany.

Other speakers at the panel were Prof. Gerhard Schreiber (Dresden), a longtime expert on military strategy in numerous top assignments at pre-1989 East German army institutes, and presently a consultant on security policies; Prof. Natalya Bubnova, expert on Russian relations to the West, working at the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow; Klaus-Dieter Böhm, director of the private station Salve.TV in Erfurt (the only German TV station that runs new items from RT Deutsch broadcaster on a regular basis).

The conference site of Auerstedt, near the city of Jena in Thuringia, was the scene of a major battle in 1806 at which Napoleon’s armies defeated the Prussian armies. “The Great Peace” was held for the fourth time there.

After Zepp-LaRouche had made a presentation on the New Silk Road and World Land-Bridge on Oct. 29, numerous specifics—including a short video, were introduced. On the Sunday panel, she again went into the importance of the new paradigm to replace the acute threat of nuclear war. This threat is originating from the fact that the Trans-Atlantic financial system is doomed, and that certain Western leaders refuse to enter intro cooperation with the Chinese and the BRICS.

Zepp-LaRouche also warned that Hillary Clinton has turned into a complete hawk in the recent period, and that her election poses the risk of a world war. Professor Schreiber, who spoke on the post-1990 history of NATO buildup and expansion against Russia, with particular reference to the detrimental role of the EU including the triggering of the Ukraine crisis, endorsed the One Belt, One Road as a peace-building new paradigm which should be joined by Europe. He said at one point, “It is because U.S. policy is against the New Silk Road, that the Americans hate you so much, Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche.”

Professor Bubnova, who spoke on the false images the West has built up on Russia, also voiced concern over Russia’s being drawn into a strategic confrontation. She said, in respect to U.S. fantasies about continued world hegemony, that it won’t work because larger parts of the world disagree, and do not want to go where the U.S. tells them to go. Schreiber also made a strong case for multipolarity as being the future of the world, replacing the unipolar period which has followed the collapse of the Soviet bloc 25 years ago.

Böhm spoke on the U.S. hand behind bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra and IS, saying these have been built up to provide a new enemy image after the Soviet enemy had disappeared after 1990.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s Important Visit to Russia, Nov. 6-8

Oct. 31 (EIRNS)—Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Li Huilai issued a statement saying the official visit of Chinese State Council Premier Li Keqiang to Russia is of great importance. Li Keqiang will visit Russia on Nov. 6-8 and attend the 21st regular meeting of the heads of government of Russia and China in St. Petersburg Nov. 7.

“The visit of Premier Li Keqiang to Russia will contribute to further development of bilateral relations,” said Li Huilai, stressing that the trip is “crucial for deepening relations between the two countries and advancing trans-border cooperation.”

Li Keqiang is visiting Russia at the invitation of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. “In Moscow, Premier Li Keqiang will meet with [President] Putin,” Li Huilai said during a press briefing. In St. Petersburg, he will attend a dinner with Medvedev before a closed meeting between the two heads of government, he said. The two sides will release a joint communiqué and sign a number of cooperation documents.

Li’s visit to Russia is part of a Eurasian tour between Nov. 2-9, in which he will pay official visits to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Russia. He will attend the 15th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) prime ministers’ meeting in Kyrgyzstan on Nov. 3; and the Fifth Summit of China and Central and Eastern European (CEEC) Countries in Latvia.

Russian and Japanese Senior Lawmakers To Discuss Bilateral Ties

Oct. 31 (EIRNS)—Valentina Matviyenko, Speaker of Russia’s Federation Council, is leading a Russian delegation in Tokyo to meet with Japanese leaders and the heads of both houses of the Japanese National Diet to discuss bolstering bilateral relations and preparations for the December visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to Japan.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said during a debate in the House of Representatives, the lower house of the National Diet, that as a member of the G7 group, Japan will maintain sanctions against Russia over Ukraine and Crimea, but he highlighted the importance of developing relations with Russia, particularly emphasizing economic relations. “We believe that developing economic ties with Russia is beneficial not only for Russia but for Japan as well,” Abe said. He added that Japan and Russia “had been facing an abnormal situation for over 70 years that needed to be solved,” referring to the absence of a peace treaty and also the problem of the “Northern Territories,” as Japan refers to Russia’s Southern Kuril Islands. The two countries are working on an eight-point economic cooperation package that Abe had proposed to Putin in May.

Optimism in Ibero-America, Caribbean, on Potential for Stronger Ties with China

Oct. 31 (EIRNS)—Optimism over the potential for greater cooperation with China is growing in much of Ibero-America and the Caribbean region, as governments actively seek expansion of economic, trade, and strategic ties with the Asian giant, at a time when nothing except misery can be gained from the decaying Trans-Atlantic sector.

This optimism was visible at the Oct. 14-15 Tenth China-Latin America-Caribbean Business Forum, held in the Chinese city of Tangshen, in Hebei province. In his keynote address, Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez, who spent nine days on a state visit to China and expressed interest in joining the New Silk Road, noted that “China and Latin America are on the road to a development that will be comprehensive. It isn’t an easy or a short road, but neither is it an impossible road that leads nowhere. On this path there is space for common goals and challenges.”

At the conclusion of the two-day conference, tangible results included the signing of 68 cooperation agreements, 21 of them involving companies, in the amount of $17 billion. Among the 1,500 participants were businessmen, diplomats, and high-level government officials from China and Ibero-America. Over the course of two days, 462 Chinese companies and 160 Ibero-American/Caribbean companies discussed projects involving construction, “renewable” energy, machinery, and investment, among other topics, Xinhua reported.

The $30 billion China-Latin America Industrial Fund (CLAIFUND) is helping Chinese companies to cooperate with companies in Ibero-America and the Caribbean to develop their industrial capabilities.

Argentine China expert Nadia Radulovich told Xinhua that one sign of expanding Chinese interest is the establishment of 35 Confucius Institutes across Ibero-America, which offer classes on Chinese history and culture, and have enrolled 150,000 students.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Russia Has Invited India To Join Its Nuclear Research Program

Oct. 31 (EIRNS)—Russia has underway an in-depth and broad-based program to develop a new generation of nuclear fission technologies, to surpass the decades-old water-cooled reactors in widespread use worldwide. They will be more efficient, lower cost, and safer. One focus is to close the nuclear fuel cycle, to recycle and re-use the nuclear “waste,” or spent fuel, produced in conventional reactors. New options to cool nuclear reactors can allow them more flexibility in siting (they don’t have to be near water). Plus, operating at higher temperatures is more efficient and allows other applications for the heat.

Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) reports today that Russia has invited India to join its multipurpose fast reactor research project, with the Russian acronym MBIR, to create “a new technological platform for nuclear energy,” explained Rosatom project manager Alexander Zagornov who was visiting India.

Zagornov explained that an array of coolants for fast reactors will be tested, such as gas, lead, and molten salt, along with an array of new materials that will have to be created. And “transition to the closed fuel cycle … will lead to the solution of the five key problems—safety, competitiveness, shortage of fuel, reprocessing and refabricating the used nuclear fuel, and radioactive waste. Overall, MBIR, will he “a one-of-a-kind facility in the world,” he says.

The R&D project could take ten years, Zagornov says, but with international cooperation, such as access to high flux reactors with which to develop and test new materials, that time could be just three.

China Moving Forward To Build New Maglev Lines for Suburban Traffic

Oct. 31 (EIRNS)—China is preparing to move further with magnetically-levitated trains in its already advanced high-speed rail program. China Railway Construction Corporation Limited has established its subsidiary, China Railway Maglev Transportation Investment & Construction Co., Ltd, located in Wuhan, Hubei province and has expended $2 billion in the system.

The subsidiary will carry out research on maglev technology for passenger and cargo transportation, in addition to planning, managing, building and investing in maglev projects. According to Qian Qingquan, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor at Southwest Jiaotong University, China has put original, domestic technology to work building a medium-low-speed maglev train (traveling at 200 kph), as well as a high-speed one (600 kph). Research into vacuum tube trains that travel at up to 4,000 kph is also underway.

The Changsha Maglev Express in central China’s Hunan province is China’s first domestically built maglev line that uses homegrown technology. The line extends over 18.5 km and takes 19.5 minutes to travel that stretch. More than 10 cities are said to be contemplating maglev for local and regional traffic, including Beijing and Qingdao as well as Changsha. At the present, the emphasis is on medium and low-speed maglev (200 kph) which link cities to their satellites and to their suburbs. But experiments are being done on high-speed long-distance systems as well.

OTHER

Sarasota Magazine Covers Ongoing 9/11 Battle, Reviews Evidence Saudis Supported Attack

Oct. 31 (EIRNS)—The November 2016 issue of Florida’s Sarasota Magazine features a lengthy account of former Sen. Bob Graham’s battle against the FBI, to unearth new evidence of high-level Saudi support for the September 11, 2001, terrorists. The article, by Lucy Morgan, a longtime Florida journalist and personal friend of Senator Graham’s, goes through the full account of the FBI cover-up of the Sarasota connection between a leading Saudi businessman and Royal Family advisor, his daughter and son-in-law, and the three Florida-based hijackers, including ringleader Mohammed Atta.

The prominent Saudi businessman, Esam Ghazzawi, owned a home in an exclusive gated community, where his daughter and son-in-law lived for six years—up until weeks before the 9/11 attacks. Security records from the gated community confirmed that Atta and two other hijackers were frequent visitors and had numerous phone conversations with the house occupants. The residents, Abdulazzi Hiijjii and his wife Anoud, lived at 4224 Escondito Circle, where they hosted the hijackers—until they abruptly left and returned to Saudi Arabia, leaving a new car in the driveway, clothes in the washer and food on the table. Hiijjii’s computer left with the couple and their two young children.

According to the Morgan account, in September 2011, Graham received a phone call from Irish investigative journalist Anthony Summers and Florida Bulldog editor and publisher Dan Christensen, indicating new evidence about a Sarasota connection to the 9/11 terrorists. When the three met several days later, Summers and Christensen reported that they had received information from an “unnamed counter-terrorism official” about the Atta visits to the Sarasota home. Senator Graham knew that the FBI had never disclosed any information about this crucial Sarasota lead when he and then Congressman Porter Goss (R-FL) co-chaired the Joint Congressional Inquiry throughout 2002. After speaking with neighbors, Graham and the two journalists confirmed that the FBI had been all over the story—but they never provided any of the information to Congress or to the 9/11 Commission.

Graham tried to contact FBI agent Gregory Sheffield, who had written some of the reports on the Sarasota investigation, but he had been transferred to Honolulu and FBI brass blocked any contact. Furthermore, several months after he began his inquiries into the Sarasota story, Senator Graham and his wife Adele were stopped at Metropolitan Washington’s Dulles Airport, as they arrived there to spend Thanksgiving with one of their children. They were hauled into a room at the airport terminal, where FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce was waiting for the senator with a pointed message: Drop the inquiries into Sarasota, stop trying to reach Sheffield, and “get a life.”

Graham, Christensen, and Summers, along with some other Florida news organizations, filed an FOIA law suit to get access to the FBI files on the Sarasota probe, and a Federal judge is now reviewing over 80,000 pages of pertinent documents.

Lucy Morgan brought out the San Diego evidence, further detailed in the 28-page chapter from the Joint Inquiry report, finally declassified in July, and she quoted Senator Graham, who believes that the Saudi royals cut a deal with bin Laden, to provide material support for the terrorist attack on the U.S. in return for a pledge from al-Qaeda to halt all insurgent activities inside the Saudi Kingdom.