EDITORIAL

At Undecided Moments in History, the Subjective Factor Is Most Important: Bring On the New Paradigm!

Dec. 6 (EIRNS)—The formal transition to the next Presidency of the United States—we have 45 days until Inauguration Day for Donald Trump—is getting incessant attention in the U.S. and other media, but the historically significant transition in the world at large, is: How fast and surely will the U.S. and Europe exit the geopolitical, casino-economic system, and enter the new win-win world paradigm? Enlisting people to help make this critical transition happen is the challenge. This involves their making a subjective shift, to becoming active, no longer passively watching and waiting. There are moments in history when the subjective factor is all-important. We are in such a time.

The circumstances are dramatic. Further initiatives toward peace and development come this week from Russia and China.

In Moscow today, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev hosted Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in many meetings, including with President Vladimir Putin. Along with key economic commitments, such as nuclear power plant construction and the Turkish Stream Pipeline, the leaders confirmed what Yildirim called, the need for a new international security architecture to vanquish terrorism, and a new dialogue with Western powers on that basis.

In Tokyo yesterday, a Chinese official from the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, made the offer to link up the Belt and Road program, with the economic “blueprints” of Japan and South Korea. Mr. Cao Wenlian, Director General of the NDRC’s International Cooperation Center, spoke of enhancing the complementarity of the economic activity of the three nations, which already together account for 36% of the world GDP. Cao was speaking on the occasion of the First Forum of Industrial Capacity Cooperation, among the three countries. The thrust of the China offer puts aside years of subservience of Japan to trans-Atlantic economic and military gamesmanship.

Even Henry Kissinger—whose personal history can be said to span very undesirable paradigms—is speaking out on behalf of U.S.-China cooperation. Kissinger met with President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Dec. 2. Today he met with Donald Trump in New York City. Last night, at a Manhattan event, Kissinger replied to a question by LaRouche PAC’s Daniel Burke, who asked: “Mr. LaRouche is strongly in agreement with you that the U.S. and China must cooperate. And he’s emphatic that the U.S. and China can cooperate on the One Belt, One Road policy, that this would be a clear way to rebuild the United States’ collapsing economy….” Kissinger replied, “I think the One Road, One Belt [sic] concept is an important item. I think that China can and should find a way of talking about it. It’s one of the issues in which cooperation probably is possible.”

This week in Washington, LaRouche PAC activists from several Eastern states, will be leading the charge on Capitol Hill, to bring reality and policy to bear, on moving the United States into the era of the new paradigm, beginning with re-instating Glass-Steagall, and proceeding to taking the actions laid out in LaRouche’s Four Laws.

Yesterday at a Washington event, both Vice President Joe Biden and Thomas Hoenig, Vice Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) spoke out in favor of the Glass-Steagall law. Biden condemned his own vote to repeal Glass-Steagall in the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act as “the worst vote I ever cast in my entire time in the U.S. Senate.” But then he twisted around to say, that’s why we now “can’t allow the repeal of Dodd-Frank,” because we need “an umpire on the field.”

However, Hoenig expressed support for re-instating Glass-Steagall, explaining that its 1999 repeal, led to the risks which created the 2008 crisis. “You allowed the commercial banks with the government safety net” to engage in all kinds of activities, and even “provided them with an expanded subsidy to do trading.” Hoenig is a potential Trump appointment to be vice-chairman for banking supervision at the Federal Reserve.

Stepping back from history, you can see that certain moments stand out, for being a time of decisive subjective change. This week, we gravely think of Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor Day, 75 years ago when American citizens changed, as a nation, overnight.

Now, today, understand that we are all called upon to actively intervene to help determine the outcome of history.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Obama Moves To Institutionalize His Killing Machine for the Next President, Reports Back Use of Force

Dec. 6 (EIRNS)—The White House yesterday released a number of documents which, it claims, “help to demonstrate that the United States acts consistently with our values and all applicable law, including the law of armed conflict and international human rights law.” This afternoon, President Obama also went to Fort MacDill, Florida, to address the troops, on what the White House described as the topic of security.

The first of the newly released documents is a presidential memorandum that “directs national security departments and agencies to prepare a formal report that describes key legal and policy frameworks currently guiding the United States’ use of military force and related national security operations, such as detention, transfer, and interrogation operations.” Accompanying the memorandum is a 60-page report which “provides in one place an articulation of the legal and policy frameworks which previously have been found across numerous speeches, public statements, reports, and other materials.”

Despite these assertions, the Obama Administration, over eight years, has bombed seven different countries without the Constitutionally required Congressional authorization and without any substantive Congressional scrutiny, instead relying, as the 60-page report shows, on the 2001 Authorization for Use Military Force (AUMF), passed by Congress in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Obama has said repeatedly this year, as the Washington Post notes, that he wanted to institutionalize the policies that have governed his administration’s use of force, in hopes that they would serve future administrations and better position the public to judge the actions of its government. The intent, in other words, is that the killing machine that Obama has constructed over the last eight years, go on killing.

Freak-Out over Attorney General-Designate Sen. Jeff Sessions’ Opposition to Drugs

Dec. 6 (EIRNS)—There is what can be best described as a total freak-out by the drug legalization mafia over the announcement that Jeff Sessions will be Donald Trump’s nomination to the post of Attorney General.

In several articles, led by a Dec. 4 reprint in Newsweek of a Nov. 21 blog by syndicated columnist Jacob Sullum, senior editor of Reasonmagazine, it is indicated that Jeff Sessions will initiate a “War On Drugs.” Sessions has a no-give policy on the marijuana issue.

Here are some quotes allegedly from Sessions himself on marijuana as commented on by Sullum:

“When Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s choice for attorney general, was nominated as a federal judge in 1986, one of the comments that got him into trouble was a joke about the Ku Klux Klan. A federal prosecutor testified that Sessions, at the time the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, had said he thought the KKK ‘was OK until I found out they smoked pot.’

“In 2014 Sessions was outraged when President Obama conceded, in a 2014 interview with The New Yorker, that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol. ‘I have to tell you, I’m heartbroken to see what the president said just a few days ago,’ Sessions told then Attorney General Eric Holder at a Senate hearing. ‘It’s stunning to me. I find it beyond comprehension. This is just difficult for me to conceive how the president of the United States could make such a statement as that. Did the president conduct any medical or scientific survey before he waltzed into The New Yorker and opined contrary to the positions of attorneys general and presidents universally prior to that?’

“At a hearing last April 2016 Sessions bemoaned the message sent by marijuana legalization. ‘I can’t tell you how concerning it is for me, emotionally and personally, to see the possibility that we will reverse the progress that we’ve made,’ he said. ‘It was the prevention movement that really was so positive, and it led to this decline [in drug use]. The creating of knowledge that this drug is dangerous, it cannot be played with, it is not funny, it’s not something to laugh about, and trying to send that message with clarity, that good people don’t smoke marijuana.’ ”

Sessions has already been endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and five former heads of the DEA.

It is already established that because of the epidemic of drug use on the country, the head of the DEA will have a cabinet post in the Trump administration to prosecute such a war on drugs. With Sessions as Attorney General, indeed, the likes of George Soros and Ethan Nadelmann, head of the Drug Policy Alliance, have much to worry about.

Tony Blair in Washington Demands ‘Strong and Vibrant’ Centrist Voices—Against Putin, Duterte

Dec. 6 (EIRNS)—Americans, beware: Tony Blair is in town. Having become the most hated politician in the U.K. for starting a genocidal war in Iraq on the basis of lies when he was prime minister, he came to Washington to give a speech on Dec. 5 to argue for a “strong and vibrant” political center, warning that the rise of so-called “strongmen,” such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, threaten the foundations of liberal democracy.

Last week in Washington, Blair announced that he is forming a new organization, to promote the “center” as opposed to the rise of dangerous populism.

Blair’s speech yesterday (no word on how much he was paid) addressed both Democrats and Republicans at a conference organized by “No Labels,” which is a coalition of Super PACs which aims to raise $50 million to support centrist members of Congress in elections. The “No Labels” program, tracing back five years, is a pabulum formula, backing austerity to “save” Medicare and Social Security, while calling for creating new jobs.

Blair told the No Label attendees yesterday, “What is new and what is very, very troubling to me is that if you look at the analysis that has just been done of support for democracy in democratic countries, some of these figures are to me quite shocking.

“This strongman type of authoritarian figure, this is one of the reasons why, for example, President Putin is admired in parts of European politics. It’s interesting how many people reference that quite openly in a way that I think 10 years ago they really would not have spoken like that.

“I think there is a real risk that we forget what liberal democratic values are about and we don’t understand that these values are absolutely fundamental to the human condition improving. But I think it all comes back to, well, what is going to be the alternative to the strongman? And the alternative to the strongman can’t be a weak center.

“This is why the answer in my view is that the center, if you want to push away and defeat this type of strongman politics, the center’s got to be strong and it’s got to be vibrant and it’s got to be dynamic. Otherwise you will find a situation where people say—this is most acute among young people, by the way—‘Well, I’ve got no particular adherence to democracy, I just want the job done, so if this guy says he can do the job then let’s get him elected.’

“We need a center that is not a flabby, lowest-common- denominator wishy-washy between the left and the right. We need something strong and muscular that is providing answers to the challenges we face.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Moscow Blasts Shameful Western Response To Bombing of Russian Hospital in Aleppo

Dec. 6 (EIRNS)—When Russian or Syrian warplanes allegedly bomb a hospital in east Aleppo, condemnation from around the Western world is immediate and intense, but when the Russians are the victims, the response, if there is one at all, is disgraceful. State Department spokesman Mark Toner, during a briefing on Dec. 5, wouldn’t even confirm that the shelling of the Russian military field hospital in Aleppo, just a few hours before, had even occurred; therefore, would not condemn it.

“It’s difficult to do, obviously, given the fighting and given our lack of access to what’s happening on the ground,” he said. But “of course we condemn any attack on a hospital or health care facility.”

According to a report on Russian-based broadcaster RT, earlier today, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch refused to condemn the attack, allegedly for lack of information, while the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued a general statement saying that “repeated attacks on healthcare and other civilian infrastructure throughout Aleppo are further indications of how all sides to the conflict in Syria are failing in their duties to respect and protect healthcare workers, patients and hospitals and to distinguish between them and military objectives.”

A number of Russian spokesmen today strongly condemned this immoral cant.

“We regret that the world community, including our partners in the United States, reacts more than modestly towards the tragedy with the shelling of our hospital in Syria,” Dmitry Peskov, Press Secretary for President Putin, said this morning. The evidence suggests that the hospital was deliberately targeted, too. “It was a high-accuracy bombardment. This show that the militants who mounted it had the corresponding coordinates,” Peskov said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke similarly. “We are confident that this attack was planned,” he said. “It was planned by those who are trying to retain their positions in Aleppo under the guise of their foreign patrons.”

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov blasted the ICRC statement, in particular. “This is not just a violation of international law by the ‘sides of the conflict,’ as the ICRC statement reads, it is a pre-planned, cold-blooded murder of doctors by militants,” he said. “The ICRC, whose president visited the Russian Defense Ministry nearly a week ago, knows perfectly well how Russia helps civilians in Aleppo,” he added.

Magne Barth, the head of the ICRC delegation in Belarus, Russia, and Moldova, told Interfax in an interview, today, that the attack on the Russian field hospital, which killed two Russian medical workers, “is completely tragic and completely unacceptable.”

The attack on the Russian hospital occurred as the UN Security Council was debating a new draft resolution, vetoed by Russia and China, calling for a seven-day ceasefire in Aleppo. Lavrov had said, before the UN vote, that the resolution contradicted talks in Geneva by U.S. and Russian experts on a plan that would evacuate armed militants from Aleppo before any ceasefire would take effect.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry has issued a statement saying that the attacks on the Russian hospital “clarify again the terrorist nature of the armed groups, which the West insists on describing as moderate.” The statement further stated that Syria stressed that it will not leave its citizens in the eastern part of Aleppo held hostage by terrorists and will exert all possible efforts to liberate them; therefore, it rejects any attempt by any side calling for ceasefire in eastern Aleppo unless it guarantees the exit of all terrorists from it, reports the official Damascus news agency, SANA.

Lavrov is to meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Hamburg, Germany on Dec. 8, on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE).

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Thomas Hoenig States Support for Glass-Steagall at Washington Event Chaired by Paul Volcker

Dec. 6 (EIRNS)—Thomas Hoenig, Vice Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), spoke at a Washington event yesterday, stating his support for reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act. The occasion, held at Georgetown University, was chaired by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker (1979-87) and former chair of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, who was in the lead of the phalanx of those acting for Wall Street in 2010 to prevent the restoration of Glass-Steagall.

Hoenig’s remarks were covered last night by TheStreet website, whose reporter Ronald Orol wrote, “Hoenig … told a conference organized by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker that Congress’s 1999 dismantling of the 1933 Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act created a host of risks that led to the 2008 financial crisis.

“ ‘When we took away Glass-Steagall, it was a choice we made, but I do want to think about the consequences,’ Hoenig said. ‘You allowed the commercial banks with the government safety net to engage in these other activities. When you did that, you provided them an expanded subsidy to do trading, whatever it is, etc. And those other institutions were now at a disadvantage, so they had to change their model.’ ”

Hoenig is cited as among those being considered to be Trump’s appointee for head of bank supervision at the Federal Reserve.

Expert Confirms EIR Exposure of Renzi’s Reform, To Make EU Law Equivalent to Italy’s Constitution

Dec. 6 (EIRNS)—Prof. Luciano Barra Caracciolo, an acting member of a branch of the Italian judiciary, confirmed what the EIR Strategic Alert wrote this week on the Italian referendum (see EIR Daily Alert, Vol. 3, #75, Dec. 5, 2016). In fact, he said, the reform aimed at “transposing” to a constitutional level “European policies,” i.e., “a political direction being shaped abroad, in a Brussels dominated by financial and oligopolistic lobbies, independent of any electoral result in Italy.” More than regulations, it concerns the so-called “guidelines” and the “resolutions” by the Commission and the EU Council. It was a pretty far-reaching constitutional change, “unique in Europe.”

Barra Caracciolo was the first to expose, in his blog “Orizzonte48,” that Renzi’s constitutional reform contained four articles which put EU law on the same level as Constitutional law. No Constitution in the world equates treaties, such as the EU Treaty, to the national Constitution, he demonstrated.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

China Willing To Link Belt and Road with Economic Blueprints of Japan and South Korea

Dec. 6 (EIRNS)—Cao Wenlian, the Director General of the International Cooperation Center of China’s National Development and Reform Commission (ICC-NDRC), attending a trilateral meeting in Tokyo with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts, said that China was willing to work with Japan and the Republic of Korea (R.O.K.) on industrial capacity cooperation in the context of the One Belt, One Road Initiative.

This occasion was the first forum on industrial capacity collaboration between the three nations. Jung Whan Woo, a research fellow with the R.O.K.’s Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, said East Asia countries should upgrade the quality and scale of their cooperation. Jung said it is of great importance for the three countries to find ways to work together in other markets, adding that China’s Belt and Road Initiative presents an opportunity for Japan and South Korea to pursue further development abroad.

Iwao Okamoto, president of the Japan-China Economic Association, called for establishing a mechanism for China-Japan-South Korean cooperation in other markets as soon as possible. Negotiations on a free trade agreement among the three countries, and the proposed pan-Asian Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, should be accelerated, Okamoto said. China has proposed cooperation in other markets using the Belt and Road Initiative and South Korea’s Eurasia Initiative.

Turkish Prime Minister in Moscow for Top-Level Meetings on Economy and Strategy

Dec. 6 (EIRNS)—Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim is in Moscow, where today, his meetings included Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, President Vladimir Putin, and Valentina Matviyenko, Chairman of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Federal Assembly, Russia’s parliament.

Among the economic activities discussed, the TurkStream, or Turkish Stream, project was highlighted. Today, the agreement went into effect, through the promulgation of it by the Turkish Official Gazette, after it was approved in Turkish General Assembly Dec. 2, and signed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Putin expressed special appreciation for the agreement.

Yildirim spoke of the significance of energy in the new relations between Russia and Turkey. He said, “the areas where we will intensify our relations are certain; energy comes first.” He said of Turkey’s commitment to build its first nuclear plant, which will be in southern Mersin Province, “Our desire is to put the first phase of the project into effect before 2023. We will make every effort to achieve this.” The agreement for the Akkuyu reactor was signed in 2010. A second reactor is planned for Sinop, the central Black Sea province, and a third, on the western Black Sea coast.

Medvedev and Yildirim gave a joint press conference after their meeting. Medvedev said, “We have agreed that the normalization of the Syrian situation is a priority task for our countries, and it will definitely serve to the benefit of the whole region, not to mention Syria, which is currently in a very complicated situation.”

Yildirim spoke to the press, on actions against terrorism, and in an exclusive op-ed for TASS, Yildirim wrote:  “While Turkey and Russia recognize the need to work closer together in anti-terrorism, not everyone seems equally convinced. We have encountered hesitation—not to say foot-dragging—from our European and American partners. Nice words are exchanged about defending civilization against terrorism. But the big terrorist networks challenging us today operate across borders.

“We cannot allow them to find sanctuary in one of our countries only to stage lethal attacks against others. To eradicate terrorism we need a forceful and united international front. And to obtain such a front Turkey and Russia should seek to establish a new, interest-based and more pragmatic type of dialogue with the great powers of the West, based on equality and non-interference in each other’s domestic affairs.”

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Going Nuclear Will Alleviate Poverty and Create Jobs, Says Philippine Chamber of Commerce

Dec. 6 (EIRNS)—The 100-plus-year-old, highly respected Chamber of Commerce of the Philippine Islands (CCPI) has been on a campaign to restart that nation’s nuclear program, seeing the potential for a change in policy with the election of Rodrigo Duterte as President. Duterte, himself, at first wavered on the question of completing the Bataan nuclear power plant, under pressure from the domestic anti-nuclear lobby, but has now asserted that he will do what is necessary to open the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant and proceed with nuclear power development.

In a statement reported in today’s Business section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the CCPI states that activating the Bataan plant—which was complete when the 1986 coup against then-President Ferdinand Marcos stopped the project—would help lower Philippines’ local electricity costs which are the highest in Asia, after Japan (which imports all of its energy resources). “Studies show that nuclear energy is the cheapest source of electricity: 79% cheaper than oil, 78% cheaper than gas, and 23% cheaper than coal.” They continue: “To improve the quality of life with lower electricity cost, the convenience of modern life will become more affordable for use by the people.”

They state that restarting the nuclear program will also create jobs and alleviate poverty. “The country has the highest unemployment rate in ASEAN,” the Chamber says. They report that from being number one in ASEAN in per-capita income, the Philippines is now number five. To counter the fear-mongering about nuclear, they state that the Bataan plant has “sister-clone plants operating safely in Korea, Slovenia, and Brazil for over 30 years.”

The move forward in the Philippines in nuclear would be important for many of the other Asian nations now considering their first nuclear power plant.