EDITORIAL
Trump Being Trapped By London and Wall Street—He Must Be Protected
Jan. 23 (EIRNS)—As Donald Trump begins his first week in office as President of the United States, the Western world is in a dangerous state of tumult and indecision, but one of extraordinary potential. The direction the Trump presidency will take is uncertain. While Trump campaigned against the role of Wall Street over Obama and Hillary Clinton, and explicitly called for restoring Glass-Steagall to end the power of Wall Street over government, his choice for Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, claimed in his Congressional confirmation hearing that neither he nor Trump want to restore Glass-Steagall, since, he said, it would disrupt “liquidity and the capital markets.” This is particularly absurd, since it comes as the entire Western financial system is facing a catastrophic collapse of the $2 quadrillion (that is, 2 and 15 zeros) derivative bubble—gambling debts sucking the blood out of the real economy.
“Trump is in trouble,” Lyndon LaRouche asserted today, pointing to his exposure to huge debts and creditors who are trying to hold him to account on behalf of the City of London and Wall Street. “We need to clean out the dirty operators—we need a clean operation in the U.S., that will protect Trump and protect the country.” LaRouche has called on the Congress to reject Mnuchin’s appointment to Treasury, and to immediately restore Glass-Steagall as the necessary first step to restoring the nation’s real economy.
The Wall Street power over leading elements of both political parties is now exposed, as the right-wing Republicans and their fellow Obama Democrats have joined forces to instigate the removal of Trump from office by any means necessary. Members of Congress and elements in the intelligence community are “investigating” connections between Trump and his cabinet appointees with the Russian government, playing on the absolute hysteria against Russia and Vladimir Putin by the Obama circle (who, as Putin said last week, “keep saying goodbye but don’t leave”).
The London Spectator on Jan. 21 ran an article by BBC journalist Paul Wood titled: “Will Donald Trump Be Assassinated, Ousted in a Coup, or just Impeached?” In this vein, the Soros-funded Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) today filed a suit in the New York courts accusing Trump of violating the Constitutional ban on office holders receiving “emoluments” (payments) from foreign governments, arguing that foreign governments or officials paying for a hotel room in a Trump hotel is the same as a criminal payoff, and likewise for foreign government-linked banks lending to a Trump company.
It should be no surprise that the head of CREW, David Brock, is the same person who ran the press campaign called “Troopergate” against President Bill Clinton. Those who think Brock has “changed sides” know nothing about the ways of the British Empire.
The fact that China and Russia have set in motion a new paradigm for mankind provides the needed direction for the new Trump administration, and for Europe and the United States generally. China’s New Silk Road process is bringing massive infrastructure development, and cooperation in scientific research and space exploration, to every nation willing to participate—and the offer stands for the U.S. to join in that process. The Russians, meanwhile, opened a meeting in Kazakhstan today bringing together the Syrian government and the leading Syrian opposition groups, to consolidate the ongoing cease-fire in the horrendous war instigated by Obama in that once-beautiful country, while beginning a process for a political settlement. It has a chance to work precisely because the British and their puppet Obama are not involved, no longer able to demand regime change rather than cooperation in fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Every development in the world today is further evidence that Lyndon LaRouche has been profoundly correct, in every forecast of the unavoidable doom of the British monetarist system, and in the necessary New Paradigm required to bring the world together for a new age of development, scientific cooperation, and a Renaissance based on the best traditions of all the world’s great cultures. It is time for people of good will to acknowledge that unique role of Lyndon LaRouche, and join forces in this pregnant moment in history to bring about that global human Renaissance.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
BBC Stringer Fuels Talk of Trump’s Assassination, Impeachment, or Coup
Jan. 23 (EIRNS)—In a carefully-constructed article published in the London Spectator Jan. 21, BBC journalist Paul Wood, who is also linked to the Washington, D.C., thinktank New America Foundation, puts out the word that Trump won’t be around for long as President. His headline is instructive: “Will Donald Trump Be Assassinated, Ousted in a Coup or Just Impeached?”
Wood begins his article with a 1788 quote from Alexander Hamilton, to buttress the idea that Vladimir Putin rigged the presidential election in Trump’s favor: “The most deadly adversaries of republican governments,” Hamilton wrote, “arise chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?” Claiming that Hamilton’s quote “speaks eerily to the Washington of today,” Wood describes Trump as in “full Nixon mode…. Is it conceivable that, like Nixon, Trump might eventually be forced from office?”
Wood is hardly an objective observer. On Jan. 12, he penned an article to lend credibility to the 35-page “dossier” on Trump fabricated by “ex” MI6 agent Christopher Steele, clearly working in cahoots with then-CIA Director John Brennan.
Protesting that it is, of course, “absurd” to pose the question that Trump might be ousted so soon after the inauguration, Wood then proceeds to describe the ways in which this might happen, beginning with Senate Intelligence Committee plans to hold hearings “on links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns.” If it were proven that Trump staff or friends met with Russians to coordinate hacking the elections, Wood intones darkly, there’s only one word for that, treason, “the first and most important of the ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ set out in the Constitution as grounds for impeachment.” If the Senate Intelligence Committee finds nothing in the “trail of breadcrumbs” provided thus far, there will be no vote for impeachment hearings by House Republicans on the Judiciary committee, Wood adds. But, if more comes out, “then anything is possible.”
While insisting that “almost no one” in Congress is talking about impeachment, Wood quotes Democrat Maxine Waters’ rant against Trump, as one “of the few” who talks openly “about the possibility,” but coyly adds he was told by “a senior Congressional aide” that House Democrats are waiting until after the inauguration “for tactical reasons.” More space is dedicated to the efforts of Robert Kuttner, of The American Prospect, “to get the impeachment bandwagon rolling….” Kuttner is certain he can use the emoluments clause of the Constitution against Trump, Wood explains, as it prohibits office-holders from receiving gifts from foreign states without Congressional approval. Wood goes on ad nauseam about all the “what if’s” that might apply—were foreign banks, or diplomats, or corporations to find ways to give Trump gifts.
Wood claims that while right-wing sites such as Alex Jones’ Infowars are warning of assassination and coup threats against Trump, he also heard something similar at “an impeccably liberal” cocktail party of “national security intellectuals,” prior to the elections.
“Conversations in Washington have taken on a hallucinatory quality. Impeachment—however far-fetched an idea—is not the most outlandish possibility being discussed in this town as the 45th President is sworn into office.”
Demonizing Trump Bolsters Neocon War-Mongers, Alienates Voters for Peace
Jan. 23 (EIRNS)—Analyst Robert Parry warns in a Jan. 21 article published in ConsortiumNews that, while there are specific issues on which President Donald Trump should be criticized, his enunciation of a more “traditional” foreign policy, and rejection of the neocon/Obama/Hillary Clinton policies of regime change and perpetual war, could offer a “new opening for conflict resolution and a return to traditional diplomacy.”
In his inaugural address, Parry points out, Trump reflected John Quincy Adams’ core view, stated in 1821, that America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy,” a principle, Parry says, every U.S. President in recent decades has violated, even after the end of the Cold War.
The danger, however, Parry warns, is that, to the degree that progressives reject everything associated with Trump, “there is a risk that the Left will trade places with the Right on the question of war and peace, with Democrats and progressives associating themselves with Hillary Clinton’s support for endless war in the Middle East, the political machinations of the CIA, and a New Cold War with Russia, essentially moving into an alliance with the Military (and Intelligence) Industrial Complex.”
Even more dangerous, Parry continues, is that Democrats and progressives engaging in anti-Trump hysteria, will further alienate the white working-class voters who are Trump’s base, and should be progressives’ natural allies. Progressives appear to be turning a blind eye to the “CIA-initiated narrative” that Vladimir Putin somehow rigged the election for Trump, and the “lack of evidence provided by the U.S. intelligence community and the dubious reasoning involved.” A political movement that is based solely on destroying Trump, “could drop Democrats and progressives into some politically-destructive traps.”
Trump’s DHS Secretary on Drugs, Economic Opportunities, and Immigration
Jan. 23 (EIRNS)—A border wall, or any physical barrier will not stop illegal immigration because of “the incredible profits that flow out of our country because of the use of drugs,” Gen. John Kelly, President Trump’s choice to head the Department of Homeland Security, stated in his Jan. 10 confirmation hearing. Over the past several years as head of the U.S. Southern Command, General Kelly has been outspoken that the horrendous levels of U.S. drug consumption, worsened by the “hypocrisy” of U.S. legalization of drugs, is the threat to national security—not the children and families fleeing the destruction of their nations by the cartels profiting off U.S. drug consumption. Kelly has been adamant that the drug cartels, which overlap human trafficking networks and international terrorism, are a huge threat to which attention must be paid.
The following excerpt from an Oct. 15, 2015 interview with General Kelly published by the Pacific Council is typical of his repeated warnings, both to the press and in Congressional hearings. Pacific Council’s Melissa Lockhart asked General Kelly what he believed are the “underlying causes” of “the flow of migrants from Central America, particularly unaccompanied minors,” adding that “these individuals who arrive at the border—via human traffickers—are fleeing violence, poverty, and crime.”
General Kelly replied:
“The underlying cause is, as you already pointed out, the lack of economic opportunity. The institutions of the countries we are talking about—the court system and the police are in total collapse. Honduras used to be the most violent country on the planet; now it seems to be El Salvador.
“Not every bit of the problem today is a result of our drug demand in the United States, but over the decades and particularly in the last 15 years, the amount of money made available by the drug trade and by U.S. use of drugs is hard to imagine. Cocaine alone brings in something like $85 billion a year in profits. That’s bigger than most countries’ GDPs.
“That leaves an unlimited amount of money for bribes. Many of the bribes are simple, something like: ‘Just turn away, Mr. Minister of Justice in Honduras. Turn away and don’t go after the cartels. Let the drugs flow and we will give you real money. If you don’t, we’ll murder your children and your family and then you.’ That’s the discussion they have, and it also applies to judges, to policemen.
“I was speaking to a Minister of Interior in one of the three countries we are talking about [Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala], and he told me that early on he would never take their money. He later gets a CD in the mail, showing his two daughters leaving for school in the morning. The next sequence in the CD is of him and his family going to Mass on Sunday morning. You get the message.
“Violence is very high, so investment is hard to come by, and so the economic opportunities are sparse, so people are on the move.
“So over time, the court systems have collapsed. The Attorneys General are ineffective. The police are all bribed. The only functioning institutions that exist today are the militaries. In fact, in most of the countries, the militaries are the most trusted and admired institutions. In many cases, they’re the only institutions that the people consider to work.
“So today not every bit of the violence is from the drug trade, but maybe 80% is. The decay of national institutions because of the drug trade has become a mess. The violence is very high, so investment is hard to come by, and so the economic opportunities are sparse, so people are on the move. Last year, we had 70,000 unaccompanied minors move to the United States up through Mexico, trafficked very efficiently. Homeland Secretary Jeh Johnson would tell you that an audit to deport any of those children is a four- or five-year process and a quarter of million dollars, with almost a zero chance they’ll go home. Frankly they’re better off in our country. I’m not saying they should stay, but they’re better off here.”
British Prime Minister Comes to Washington To Save the British Empire from Trump
Jan. 23 (EIRNS)—Even before her meeting with President Trump this Friday, Jan. 27, British Prime Minister Theresa May will attend the Congressional Republicans’ retreat in Philadelphia. She made clear in interviews with the Financial Times Jan. 21 and BBC on Jan. 22 that her agenda is to crush President Trump’s questioning of an “obsolete” NATO and his rejection of the policies of regime change, confrontation with Russia, and endless wars.
Because of the U.S.-British “special relationship,” I can tell the U.S. President when something is “unacceptable,” she huffed. As she told BBC: “It is the special relationship that allows us to say when something is unacceptable. Whenever there is something I find unacceptable, I won’t be afraid to say that to Donald Trump.”
BBC reported her statement to them that she will emphasize the “importance of NATO and defeating terrorism,” failing to note that Trump’s objection to NATO is precisely that it does not fight terrorism, but only confronts Russia. May added that a Downing Street spokesman had announced on Sunday that she had also spoken with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to discuss “the continued importance of the Alliance as the bulwark of our defense. The Prime Minister said she would be taking these messages to Washington later this week,’ the spokesman added.”
CREW Lawsuit ‘Get Trump’ Team Replays British Crown’s 1990s ‘Get Clinton’ Operation
Jan. 23 (EIRNS)—American statesman Lyndon LaRouche has warned for decades that the British Empire is the greatest enemy of the institution of the U.S. Presidency per se, targetting any President who threatens to defend the United States and its people, regardless of party or profile.
LaRouche’s admonition is proven in spades by today’s favored media-feeding frenzy against President Donald Trump, the lawsuit filed by “Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.”
CREW charges that President Trump is violating the Constitution by illegally receiving payments from foreign governments; that because he did not divest from his businesses, “he is now getting cash and favors from foreign governments, through guests and events at his hotels, leases in his buildings, and valuable real estate deals abroad,” from countries such as China, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines. CREW made clear it has been waiting to pounce.
“Now that he is President, his company’s acceptance of any benefits from the governments of those countries violates the Constitution,” CREW wrote.
CREW is a self-proclaimed “progressive” outfit set up in 2001 to counter similar conservative operations. One of its major funders? George Soros’s Open Society Institute. Who is George Soros? Not just a ruthless mega-speculator who got his training expropriating the properties of Jews sent to the death camps by the Nazi occupiers of his native Hungary, but the British Crown’s leading drug-pusher globally, and well-known as a key hitman in the British Empire’s “color revolutions” internationally. The same Soros who continues to back Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Who is the president of CREW? One David Brock, denounced by many as a “liberal” or “left-wing” political hitman. Founder of the Media Matters for America “watchdog,” Brock has also made himself a powerhouse in the Democratic Party, through such vehicles as his “American Bridge 21st Century PAC” superpac—also funded by George Soros. He purports to be a close ally of Hillary Clinton.
This is the very same Brock who in the 1990s, then operating as a “right-wing” hitman, played a key role in the British Crown’s operation to emasculate the U.S. Presidency by impeaching Bill Clinton. Brock played his assigned role in the “Get Clinton” operation run by MI6’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, scribbling the so-called “Troopergate” article, published by American Spectator in December 1993 which triggered the media uproar which then led to President Clinton’s Jan. 12, 1994 request for the appointment of an independent counsel and the eventual impeachment of the President.
On Dec. 6, 2016, the now-retooled hitman, Brock announced that his American Bridge superpac had set up a “war room” to take down the Trump administration on “corruption” charges. Brock promised that “American Bridge will use everything at its disposal to hold [the Trump administration] accountable,” and bragged of having the largest archive of Trump opposition research in the Democratic Party.
Three days later, Wall Street—that bastion of “Tory” traitors since the American Revolution—weighed in, to buttress Brock’s “conflict of interest” operation. This not-so-subtle “play-ball” message to the President-elect took the form of a Bloomberg news service posting on Dec. 9 called “Tracking Trump’s Web of Conflicts.” It contained a world map and an accompanying listing of Trump’s businesses and potential businesses in 20 countries, with a final section tagged on, reporting the $630 million of debt reportedly owed by Trump’s businesses to such international lenders as Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and others.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Failed Trident Missile Test Disclosure Ignites Crisis In Britain
Jan. 23 (EIRNS)—British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon was hauled before the House of Commons, today, to answer questions about a failed test of a Trident nuclear missile launched from a Royal Navy submarine in June of 2016. The London Sunday Times, in an article breaking the story, yesterday, reported that during a routine operational test from a U.S. military operating range off the coast of Florida, the missile, fired from the HMS Vengeance ballistic missile submarine, “veered off course” heading towards the U.S. coast instead of the target area off the coast of West Africa and had to be destroyed. The developing scandal is around the fact that about a month later, Prime Minister Theresa May forced a vote in the Parliament on approving £40 billion to start construction on a new class of submarines to carry the Trident nuclear missiles without informing MPs of the launch failure.
A question not raised in the debate: If the U.S. has a “launch on warning” policy, could the “failure” have led to catastrophic results? What was Obama up to at the time? In fact, the Anglo-Obama military was in full mobilization at the time preparing for war on Russia. When briefed on the incident, Lyndon LaRouche found it well worth investigating given all the provocations which former President Barack Obama and his British allies had been making at the time.
Fallon, under questioning in the House of Commons, refused to characterize the test launch as failure, following the line put out by Downing Street, earlier, that the test firing was actually a certification of the HMS Vengeance submarine and its crew, after the sub had come out of refit, and since the sub and its crew performed flawlessly, it was, in fact, a success, regardless of what happened to the missile after it left its launch tube, and what happened is not entirely clear. Fallon refused to answer any questions about the operational nature of the test launch, itself, even after one MP cited CNN reporting that a U.S. defense official confirmed that the test launch ended in failure. “The government would not have brought the motion before the House last July if there had been any doubt about the safety and effectiveness of the deterrent” he said.
Not surprisingly, both Labour and the Scottish National Party (SNP) are up in arms about the matter. Nia Griffith, Labour’s Shadow defense secretary, said: “This report of a Trident missile veering off course during a test is clearly a very serious matter indeed, and we need to know exactly what happened.
“Furthermore, it is completely unacceptable that today the Prime Minister chose to side-step questions on the test, and would not even tell us when she knew about the incident,” she said. “I am demanding the Prime Minister come to Parliament to give a full explanation to MPs.”
Commenting on the reports, TASS cites Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin saying on his Facebook page that it was a “dangerous incident.”
Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, is also demanding that May come clean. “This is a hugely serious issue. There should be full disclosure of what happened, who knew what/when, and why the House of Commons wasn’t told,” she said in a tweet. “It would be utterly unacceptable, and deeply serious, if it turns out that this information was deliberately kept from MPs at the time of the renewal vote for the Trident weapons of mass destruction program,” said SNP Westminister leader Angus Robertson.
While the Ministry of Defense said the tests were routine and they don’t comment on activities of their submarines, this is contrary to fact. All four of the previous tests, in 2000, 2005, 2009 and 2012, which were successful, were followed by press releases and videos announcing the fact. The Russians in all those tests were informed, because it was known that they had ships in the area monitoring the test.
Moldova’s Leader Plans To Cancel Agreement on Establishing NATO Liaison Office
Jan. 23 (EIRNS)—Moldova’s President Igor Dodon announced plans to cancel the agreement on establishing a NATO Liaison Office in the country’s capital of Chisinau, in an interview on Russia’s RT network. He said, “I will work to cancel this agreement.” Dodon had been on an official visit to Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. Dodon also said that he would hold a meeting with heads of NATO countries in Brussels in early February to “find out whether the Alliance members were ready to uphold and sign an agreement that would ensure Moldova’s neutral status.”
Dodon also said that despite a strong “pro-NATO” propaganda, the majority of Moldova’s population does not want the country to join NATO.
“We will block any [NATO infiltration] attempts as well as prevent any dubious joint military exercises,” he said.
According to its constitution, Moldova is a neutral state and is not a member of any military blocs.
SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Europe’s X-Ray Telescope Is on Its Way to Russia for SRG Mission
Jan. 23 (EIRNS)—The European Space Agency’s X-ray telescope, eROSITA, was placed in a cargo plane on Jan. 20 in Munich, and headed for Moscow, reported its creator, the Max Planck Institute. The expected arrival date at Russia’s Lavochkin laboratory near Moscow is Jan. 25. It will be one of two instruments that make up Russia’s Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) mission. ESA’s eROSITA will be integrated with Russia’s ART-XC telescope, to make a four-year study of X-ray sources. The instruments are designed to have a sensitivity 25-30 times greater than previous orbiting X-ray telescopes, and will make eight full-sky studies, revealing new X-ray sources. The spacecraft will be placed at the L-2 point, more than a million miles from Earth.
Dr. Andrea Merloni, project scientist for ESA’s eROSITA telescope, explained that the instrument “will be able to study not only the distribution of clusters of galaxies,” and “detect more than 100,000 of these most massive bound objects in the Universe—but also millions of active black holes at the centers of galaxies, as well as rare objects in the Milky Way, such as isolated neutron stars.”
The mission has been more than a decade in the making, with challenges in developing the technology for the two telescopes. It is now set for launch in 2018 on a Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Astronaut Fuglesang To Teach Free Online Space Flight Course
Jan. 23 (EIRNS)—European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Christer Fuglesang will be teaching a five-week online course on human space flight, starting Jan. 23. The course is sponsored by the Swedish KTH Royal Institute of Technology in collaboration with ESA. The course will be free of charge, KTH explains. There will be weekly tests, and a final exam. A certified diploma is available, for those who pass the tests, for a fee.
Fuglesang flew on two Space Shuttle missions, in 2006 and 2009, and later was head of the Science Applications Division of ESA’s Human Spaceflight directorate. He earned a PhD in particle physics from Stockholm University.
Promoting the class, the astronaut said: “Human space flight is extremely inspiring and involves much more than the few lucky astronauts who go to space. Enroll now if you are curious about space fight or want a better understanding of the subject.”
