EDITORIAL
LaRouche: Tolerating Obama and Hillary Brings Bloodshed and War
Nov. 1 (EIRNS)—Polling data released this week shows that voters in the vital swing states overwhelmingly support the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall and other measures to break up the big Wall Street banks. According to the poll by the Lake Research Partners, 70% of voters in Florida, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Ohio want the Glass-Steagall Act restored now. The poll concluded, “Public frustration with Wall Street recklessness and greed is high and cuts across the political spectrum. Whoever wins this election should make turning this outrage into real change a high priority.”
Lyndon LaRouche on Tuesday took that argument to its logical conclusion: All of that hatred is actually directed at President Obama, whose disastrous policies have brought us to the point of existential crisis. Hillary Clinton is an extension and continuation of those Obama policies: protection of Wall Street; inaction in the face of a nationwide illegal drug epidemic; perpetuation of overseas endless wars costing taxpayers trillions of dollars; the total destruction of the U.S. healthcare system under Obamacare; demonization of Russia, driving us to thermonuclear World War III.
An honest vote on Nov. 8 will show this hatred of Obama and everything he has done to the United States on behalf of his British masters. British interests have run Obama since the day he entered politics. Hillary Clinton destroyed herself through her capitulation to Obama, and this is why she is hated. Any attempt to conceal this on election day will lead to bloodshed.
This is deadly serious. We are not only facing the prospect of domestic bloodshed, but the real chance of war. We are on the edge of World War III already, because of the Obama policies of provocation against Russia, policies that Hillary Clinton has carried to an even more obscene extreme.
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Voters in Must-Win Swing States Overwhelmingly Want Glass-Steagall
Nov. 1 (EIRNS)—The Institute for Policy Studies website Inequality.org reported on a recent poll commissioned by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), and conducted in Florida, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Ohio by Lake Research Partners, which showed that Wall Street is a big issue among swing voters. Under the headline “Swing Voters Want Wall Street Reform,” the website reported Oct. 21 that 70% of the voters polled, strongly supported reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act.
The poll concluded, “The leadership of both parties should aim to take swift action on this issue, given the bipartisan support and the fact that nearly 70% of battleground voters favor it.” Sixty-eight percent also supported breaking up the big banks “so taxpayers aren’t on the hook for future bailouts.” “Public frustration with Wall Street recklessness and greed is high and cuts across the political spectrum. Whoever wins this election should make turning this outrage into real change a high priority.”
While Donald Trump has come out for Glass-Steagall, most recently in his Charlotte, North Carolina speech last week, new emails from the Clinton campaign reveal that top Hillary Clinton economic advisors Gene Sperling and Gary Gensler argued against her endorsing the reinstating of Glass-Steagall, and actually wrote the words she used to reject restoring it, while still trying to give the appearance she will be tough on Wall Street.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Trump Hits at Another Big Obama Failure: Opioid Epidemic
Nov. 1 (EIRNS)—Last week the Trump campaign issued a policy paper on the Republican candidate’s program for halting the nationwide epidemic of opioid addiction and overdose deaths. Some 47,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2014, the last year that comprehensive data is available.
The Trump plan, while focusing on the flow of illegal drugs across the southern border from Mexico, also pledged to tighten the Federal laws to restrict the unbridled production of prescription opioids like fentanyl. He assailed the Obama Administration’s failure to crack down on domestic drug traffickers, noting that “President Obama has commuted the sentences of record numbers of high-level drug traffickers, many of them kingpins, and violent armed traffickers with extensive criminal histories. Hillary Clinton promises to continue this approach, turning our streets back over to gangs, drug cartels, and armed career criminals.”
Trump did endorse the only piece of drug enforcement legislation introduced by the Obama Administration, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which Obama signed into law in July. His campaign plan also called for expanded use of drug courts, “expanded access to treatment slots and end to Medicaid policies that obstruct inpatient treatment.”
Trump, Pence Attack Anti-American Obamacare at Valley Forge
Nov. 1 (EIRNS)—GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, savaged Obamacare at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania today, before an enthusiastic crowd.
At the time Obamacare rolled out, American statesman Lyndon LaRouche likened its “cost-saving” in medical care to those instituted by Hitler in Nazi Germany, saying, “It’s going to kill people.”
Joined on stage by a number of Republican male and female physician Members of Congress, Trump ridiculed the fakery of Obama and Hillary Clinton’s touted Obamacare, “If you like the healthcare plan (or doctor) you have, you can keep it.” As many Americans know, there was never, never any basis for this lie. Trump said Hillary Clinton’s 2,700-page bill had led to double- and triple-digit price hikes for families, and greater than 60% increases for Pennsylvania families. Far from more choices, one-third of Pennsylvania’s counties will offer only one healthcare provider in 2017, including the city of Philadelphia.
Trump ceded to his Vice-Presidential candidate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who had fought successfully to modify Obamacare in Indiana, the first attack on Obamacare’s failures. Pence pointed out that Obamacare may have done more than price increases in any other area to lower the living standard of Americans. He cited a 53% increase in Obamacare premiums in Pennsylvania this year, which, added to last year’s increase, makes a 69% rise in two years. Pence pointed out that 110,000 households will get no government help to pay these steep increases. With the increases in the premiums and the deductibles, which those insured must pay before the coverage starts, “They can’t afford to use their health plans!” said Pence. “It is a crushing weight on the American economy, costing jobs. Bill Clinton was right to say ‘It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.’
“Twenty percent of Pennsylvanians have only one insurer available…. Millennials already can’t afford to use their plans. They can’t continue to see their doctors. They have huge deductibles—the average deductible is $12,000 for cheap plans; that’s one-quarter of median household income in the United States. Many doctors have opted out of the plans.”
Pence said Obamacare has proven “destructive” of the U.S. economy, having placed $1 trillion in new taxes on providers and reduced business employment by 350,000.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
U.S.-Turkey Dispute over Battle of Raqqa Timing
Nov. 1 (EIRNS)—As Iraqi forces move into Mosul in a prolonged battle to oust the Islamic State from its key Iraqi stronghold, a fierce debate has erupted between the United States and Turkey over the timing and strategy for driving ISIS out of Raqqa in Syria. On Oct. 28, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that the United States was about to launch an assault on Raqqa “in a matter of weeks.” This brought strong complaints from Turkey, that pressed Washington to delay the battle for Raqqa until Mosul has been retaken and the Turkish forces have completed their “Euphrates Shield” operations to secure the border region in Syria.
The issue underlying the dispute is the fact that the United States intends to rely heavily on the Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units) forces that make up the bulk of the Syrian Democratic Force. In a briefing to Pentagon reporters from Baghdad recently, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Storm, explained that there are solid intelligence indications that ISIS is plotting major, new global terrorist attacks out of its Raqqa headquarters, and the launching of the assault on Raqqa should not be delayed.
Last Wednesday, Oct. 26, Presidents Obama and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey spoke by phone, and according to the White House account, Obama was explicit that the U.S. was backing the SDF, which is the only reliable fighting force capable of leading the assault on Raqqa. Erdogan insisted that the YPG—the majority force in the SDF—is the Syrian arm of the terrorist Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) and should not be supported by Washington.
In London to accept an award from Chatham House for his and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s work on the P5+1 nuclear deal, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made clear that he is committed to the same kind of patient diplomacy that got the Iran deal for Syria as well. He correctly pointed out that the Syrian war is actually an overlapping series of wars—all playing out on Syrian territory, which makes it far more difficult to resolve.
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib in China—Another Nail in Obama’s ‘Asia Pivot’ Coffin
Nov. 1 (EIRNS)—Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has further exposed the collapse of Obama plan to use Southeast Asian nations as patsies for his military confrontation with China. On day two of his week-long visit to China, Najib signed a two-year defense agreement with China and $34.4 billion in economic deals, including the construction of an East-West railroad, and probably also a high-speed rail line from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore.
The defense deal is especially a slap in the face to the neo-cons in Washington. Malaysia will buy four littoral mission ships, capable of carrying missiles and a helipad. Two will be built in China, and two in Malaysia, allowing for a technology transfer as well. “I call this a landmark decision because before this, we had not bought such vessels from China,” said Najib at a press conference after holding bilateral talks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. He did not need to mention that most military equipment has come from the United States.
The East-West rail line will go from Port Klang, near Kuala Lumpur on the Malacca Strait, across the peninsula and then north along the east coast to near the Thai border. This will hugely benefit the development of the east coast, which is poorer and less developed than the west coast. Najib said China had agreed to grant soft loans to Malaysia for the construction of the East Coast Rail Line, estimated to cost about $13.2 billion.
Altogether 14 Memorandums of Understanding have been signed at the Great Hall of The People, including for a new port construction on the Malacca Strait.
“Leaders of the two sides agreed to further advance the proper settlement of the South China Sea issue with dialogue through a bilateral channel,” Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters. “Obviously the launching of naval cooperation between the two sides is significant for our bilateral ties. It’s a reflection of the very high level, mutual political trust between our two countries,” Liu said.
Most Western coverage of these developments say that Najib is turning away from the United States and toward China because of the FBI investigation of the One Malaysia scandal, which included about $1 billion of possible funds from the sovereign wealth fund being laundered into the United States. While this scandal is significant, Najib has never broken from his strong ties to China (this is his third visit during his administration) and is to some extent responding to the same issues as that of President Duterte in the Philippines—he doesn’t want a war, and he wants to cooperate with China.
Japan’s Economy Minister To Visit Russia This Month
Nov. 1 (EIRNS)—Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Hiroshige Seko, who is charge of relations with Russia, told TASS Nov. 1 about Japan’s interest in developing economic cooperation. He is expected to visit Moscow on Nov. 3-5. “Interest in cooperation with Russia has been shown at the local level not only by Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, but by other regions too, such as Niigata and Toyama prefectures,” the minister said as reported by TASS. “We would like the strengthening of economic ties with Russia to be linked to the development of our regions’ economy. They already have a high level of cooperation with your country at a business level. I believe that more and more companies will join cooperation at a regional level with the development of our ties.”
Seko will have talks with Russian Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev, and Alexander Galushka, the Minister for the Development of the Russian Far East.
Energy is expected to be a key topic of discussion. It is reported that Niigata Prefecture, located along the coast of the Sea of Japan, is interested in the laying of a gas pipeline from Russia and the construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) venture in Niigata. “One of the most important points of our energy policy is to eliminate dependence on the Middle East, it is too high. It is very important to cooperate with Russia in this area, which includes the development of new energy supply routes,” Seko stressed.
Again the eight-point plan of cooperation with Russia proposed by Japan will be discussed. “Then specific projects can be discussed with our Russian colleagues in November in Peru where the APEC summit will be held,” Seko said. “Funding issues will be discussed too. Some projects involve high costs, it is also necessary to check the two countries’ legislation concerning any contradictions.”
Unveiled during the May meeting between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Vladimir Putin at their May summit in Sochi, the eight-point plan calls for developing projects in energy, small and medium-sized businesses, the promotion of the industrialization of the Far East, expanding exports, and bolstering cooperation in advanced technologies, including the nuclear power industry.
SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Prominent NASA Committee Slams SpaceX Rocket Technique as Unsafe
Nov. 1 (EIRNS)—From the start of NASA’s funding of private companies to take astronauts into Earth orbit, which was the alternative to the government’s crew capsule/Ares-1 rocket under the Constellation program that President Obama cancelled, there have been serious questions regarding the safety of the crew. NASA describes its responsibility under the commercial crew program, as having “insight” rather than “oversight” of the programs, casting aside decades of adherence to government-designed and enforced safety requirements.
With the September explosion of a Space Exploration Technology (SpaceX) rocket during a test fueling, its program, which is supposed to advance to taking crew into orbit, has been under more scrutiny.
But as Andy Pasztor, science writer for the Wall Street Journal, reviews today, months before the SpaceX rocket explosion, NASA’s independent International Space Station Advisory Committee pointed to the procedure being used by SpaceX to fuel the rocket, as one with potentially serious safety concerns, were there a crew atop the rocket. A letter stating such was sent in December to NASA headquarters by the Committee’s chair, highly-respected Apollo astronaut, Gen. Tom Stafford (ret.). Stafford was responsible for safety evaluations during the 1990s Shuttle/Mir missions, and has carried that responsibility into the ISS program.
Meeting yesterday, Pasztor reports, the Advisory Committee issued “further strong warnings about the potential safety hazards” of the SpaceX rocket fueling procedure. NASA has said it will brief the Committee on its evaluation next month. It remains to be seen which, if any, NASA astronauts end up on a SpaceX mission to the space station.
Space Agency Representatives from the BRICS Countries Meet, Discuss Integration
Nov. 1 (EIRNS)—At the first meeting of representatives of the BRICS countries’ space agencies yesterday in Zhuhai, China, there was discussion of an agreement for cooperation in space exploration. It was proposed that a Memorandum of Understanding with specific goals be presented at the second planned meeting, to be held in Russia next Spring. Roscosmos head Igor Komarov stated that these meetings of BRICS space agencies, from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, would become regular.
This is a ground-breaking initiative, which, by integrating and coordinating the five nations’ space assets, would upgrade the capabilities of each. The first project would be to share remote sensing data. Each one of the BRICS nations has at least one Earth remote sensing satellite in orbit (in the case of China and Brazil, it is a joint program), with different operational capabilities, observing at a variety of wavelengths, and in different orbits. Integrating all the observations would create new data sets that cannot be obtained from any one system.
“The document that we are preparing represents a mechanism that would facilitate cooperation [in space technology] and I hope that we will be able to finalize it in the near future,” said Komarov. Navigation and space research were also reportedly discussed at the meeting.
“We think that, for our countries, going in this direction will allow us to increase the pool of information we receive about Earth, several times,” he added.
This is a challenging proposal. For one, some of the data are dual-use, and used by the military in Russia, China, and India. In addition, there are commercial companies that process remote sensing images and then sell them, so some rules of the road will be needed. Komarov noted that the countries have been thrashing out the legal details of an agreement.
The potential here, naturally, is to see an extension of this cooperative framework to include manned and robotic missions of exploration, already underway by Russia, China, and India, in addition to the widest application of space technologies throughout the BRICS, and the nations along the Space Silk Road.
OTHER
Heroin Epidemic Wiping Out an Entire Generation of Children
Nov. 1 (EIRNS)—In Cincinnati today, doctors, nurses, social workers and addiction specialists are gathered at Xavier University for an all-day conference to discuss the destruction of an entire generation of children, either born addicted to heroin, or living chaotic lives because their parents are addicted to heroin or opioid painkillers.
The heroin epidemic has devastated once-industrialized Ohio, which last year witnessed a 20% increase in heroin overdose deaths to 3,050. Over the past seven years, Ohio’s Public Children Services Association reported a 19% increase in the number of children taken into custody, due largely to their parents’ heroin and painkiller addiction. Add to this the paradigmatic case of Huntington, West Virginia, once a thriving center of the coal industry. As CNN reported Sept. 16, one in ten babies born at Cabel-Huntington Hospital is addicted to some type of drug—15 times the national average. Two dozen addicted babies are cared for in the neonatal therapeutic unit, 12 more than it was built to accommodate.
According to Associated Press, Dr. Kathy Wedig, a neonatologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, reported at today’s conference that the physical problems of addicted newborns and the chaos faced by the children of addicts, combined, mean that these children “cannot have what we would consider a normal childhood.” Dr. Jennifer Bowden, a child psychiatrist, reported on the significant increase, both in numbers and severity, of cases of children suffering from what she called “toxic stress,” caused by exposure to trauma and neglect related to their parents’ addictions. Toxic stress negatively affects a child’s physical, emotional, social and language development, and leads to serious health risks later in life, she explained.
Conference attendees are concerned about the astronomical cost of caring for and treating such children, rightly so given that drug legalizer Barack Obama has denied Americans’ access to decent healthcare.
CBS News quotes Sam Quinones, author of the book Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, who pointed to the absolute lack of any serious discussion in this year’s presidential campaign of the heroin epidemic or addiction to opioid drugs. The issue is splashed across Ohio’s media every day, he said. Highway billboards promote Narcan, the antidote to heroin overdose. But “the presidential election seems to be fantasyland. People are covering bizarre little details that matter not one iota to many American lives. But no one has spent time talking about the opiate epidemic.”
At a recent Cleveland campaign event addressed by Obama, CBS reported, a woman sat in the front row close to him, clutching a picture of a deceased relative, and each time Obama paused, she shouted “what about heroin?” He never responded or mentioned the problem of drug addiction once during his speech.
