EDITORIAL

We’re Going To Defeat This Coup!

July 30 (EIRNS)—Lyndon LaRouche recently said that if the coup-in-process against President Trump succeeds, we will have nuclear war.

Lyndon LaRouche is not the only one who has realized this. Today saw unprecedented sorts of military displays both in Russia and in China. In Russia, a Main Naval Parade was held for the first time in modern Russia’s history—on Navy Day, in celebration of the creation of the Russian Navy by Peter the Great in 1696. For the first time it brought together ships from Russia’s Baltic, Black Sea, Northern and Pacific Fleets, with its Caspian Flotilla, for a total of 5,000 sailors—and for the first time in modern Russian history, it was inspected by Russia’s President.

At the same time in China, the 90th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army was celebrated by a military parade, for the first time since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. It was held at Zhurihe, in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, at China’s biggest military base, which specializes in training in advanced technology. The Wall Street Journal reports that new, more-capable ICBMs were displayed with other new weapons, and 12,000 mechanized troops.

China’s official news agency Xinhua reports that this was the first time President Xi Jinping has overseen such a large parade at a military base. It noted that “Late leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping also inspected troops in the field at key moments in history.”

In his address, Xi said, “The world is not all at peace, and peace must be safeguarded.”

Now, at this critical moment, the former United Nations chief weapons inspector in Iraq Scott Ritter has stepped forward in effect to use the main conclusions of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) July 24 Memorandum to President Trump, to derail the ongoing coup attempt. Writing in Truthdig on July 27, Ritter says, “I agree with the argument of the July 24 VIPS memorandum that takes issue with the Jan. 6, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian meddling. This NIA evaluation assessed ‘with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release U.S. victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks.’ The assessments contained within the Russia ICA, which lies at the very heart of the ongoing controversy surrounding accusations of collusion by people affiliated with the Trump presidential campaign and Russia, is demonstrably wrong. The VIPS memorandum to President Trump is a valuable contribution to a larger discussion of the intelligence community’s erroneous assessment that is, otherwise, lacking.

“The implications of the conclusions reached in the VIPS memorandum … are staggering: The DNC ‘hack’ was actually a cyber-theft perpetrated by an insider with direct access to the DNC server, who then deliberately doctored documents to make them look as if they had been accessed by a Russian-speaking actor prior to releasing them to the public. This is not the narrative being pushed by the U.S. intelligence, Congress and the mainstream media. Moreover, if true, the conclusions reached by VIPS point to a broader conspiracy within the United States to undermine the credibility of an admittedly unpopular, yet legitimately elected president, that borders on sedition.

“No one has linked the theft of the DNC documents to Guccifer 2.0….

“Which brings up perhaps the most curious aspect of this entire case: The DNC servers at the center of this controversy were never turned over to the FBI for forensic investigation. Instead, the FBI had to rely upon copies of the DNC server data provided by CrowdStrike. The fact that it was CrowdStrike, and not the FBI, that made the GRU attribution call based upon the investigation of the alleged cyber-penetration of the DNC server is disturbing. As shown here, there is good reason to doubt the viability of the CrowdStrike analysis. That the FBI, followed by the U.S. Congress, the U.S. intelligence community, and the mainstream media, has parroted this questionable assertion as fact is shocking….”

Ritter concludes, “The stakes could not be higher. The American people would do well to demand a proper investigation into what actually transpired at the DNC in the spring of 2016. To date there has been no examination worthy of the name regarding the facts that underpin the accusations at the center of the American argument against Russia—that the GRU hacked the DNC server and used Guccifer 2.0 as a conduit for the release of stolen documents in a manner designed to influence the American presidential election. The VIPS memorandum of July 24, 2017, questions the veracity of these claims. I believe these doubts are well founded.”

Yet, despite all this, the House of Representatives passed an insane Russia-sanctions bill by the unbelievable vote of 419-3 on July 25, followed by the Senate’s unbelievable vote of 98-2 on July 27. The American people had just elected a President who stood for friendship with Russia, and for peace—against a candidate who all but promised war with Russia if elected. Obviously, nothing could be further from their minds than forcing through Congress belligerent moves against Russia.

This was a British intelligence job, and a major tool used by British intelligence to get this dirty job through, was AIPAC, the so-called “American Israel Public Affairs Committee.” These lopsided, blackmailed House and Senate votes are AIPAC’s trademark. New Yorker reporter Jeffrey Goldberg reported on July 4, 2005, that some years earlier, at a Washington restaurant, he had asked AIPAC official Steven Rosen whether AIPAC had lost influence after an earlier scandal. “A half-smile appeared on his face, and he pushed a napkin across the table. ‘You see this napkin?’ he said. ‘In 24 hours, we could have the signatures of 70 senators on this napkin.’ ”

Now don’t be confused—AIPAC doesn’t represent Jews or Israel. Neither Israeli nor American Jews agree with the politics of AIPAC—as this insane sanctions bill, pushed through by AIPAC, makes clear once more. AIPAC represents the heirs of organized-crime kingpin Meyer Lansky, the Meyer Lansky who was thrown out of Israel by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. It represents organized crime, the symbiosis of organized crime with J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, and the masters of both in British intelligence and the British Royals. Lyndon LaRouche has laid this out before. See his article in EIR of August 21, 1987, for instance.

AIPAC takes credit for this lunatic sanctions bill on the front page of its website. It didn’t help that every Congressman knows that the NSA has copies of every image they ever sent or received on their cellphones—as Edward Snowden has shown us.

We must defeat this coup.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

FBI’s General Counsel, a Comey Pal, May Be First Target of Criminal Prosecution for Leaks

July 28 (EIRNS)—FBI General Counsel James A. Baker, a close collaborator of former FBI Director James Comey, is reported by “unnamed sources” to be under investigation as one of the leakers of classified material to the media, according to Circa reporter Sara Carter yesterday. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced that he would soon be opening an investigation into the leaks, as President Trump has been demanding.

According to Circa, Baker was hired by Comey in 2014 as General Counsel of the FBI, and has worked closely with Comey, including on Comey’s meetings with Trump and his subsequent role in the ongoing coup attempt against the President.

FBI spokeswoman Carol Cratty said the Bureau would not comment on Baker and would not confirm or deny any investigation, Carter writes.

In 2006 Baker received the George H.W. Bush Award for Excellence in counter-terrorism, the CIA’s highest counter-terrorism award, Carter reports. He is a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a lecturer at Harvard Law School.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

New U.S. and Japanese Sanctions on North Korea Also Target China

July 28 (EIRNS)—The sanctions bill passed by the Congress July 27 includes new sanctions on North Korea in addition to the Russia and Iran sanctions. The North Korean sanctions were originally passed by the House in May but stalled there, until they were added this week to the new Russia/Iran bill.

Most important, the bill passed July 27 restricts the power of President Trump to lift existing sanctions on North Korea, as it does with existing Russian sanctions—another open attack on Trump.

Like the Russia sanctions, the North Korea sanctions also target third party persons and businesses, primarily in China and Russia. The sanctions would prohibit ships from entering U.S. waters if owned by North Korea or by any country “not complying with UNSC resolutions.” Many of the war-hawks in the Congress regularly accuse China (falsely) of not following UN resolutions on North Korea.

The sanctions also include: “The President shall impose U.S. property-based sanctions on foreign persons that employ North Korean forced laborers.” This clearly refers to China, Russia, and other countries that accept contract workers from North Korea, which the bill simply asserts are “forced laborers.”

Japan also announced new sanctions on North Korea today, which include sanctions on two Chinese entities.

North Korea responded quickly—it tested another ballistic missile today.

Europe Resists New Sanctions Imposed by U.S. Congress

July 28 (EIRNS)—The new sanctions against Russia voted by Congress which imposes penalties on European companies that do business with Russian oil and gas companies, offer an opportunity for real leaders to rally their populations around the national interests.

German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schäfer said July 26, “It would be unacceptable for the United States to use possible sanctions as an instrument to serve the interests of U.S. industry policies. Germany strongly backs the Nord Stream 2 pipeline deal it has signed with Russia.”

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker pronounced on July 26 that “The EU is fully committed to the Russia sanctions regime. However, G7 unity on sanctions and close coordination among allies are at the heart of ensuring the full implementation of the Minsk Agreements. This is a core objective that the EU and the U.S. share. The U.S. Bill could have unintended unilateral effects that impact the EU’s energy security interests. This is why the Commission concluded today that if our concerns are not taken into account sufficiently, we stand ready to act appropriately within a matter of days. America first cannot mean that Europe’s interests come last.”

Britain’s Guardian further extrapolated in its report that “If the U.S. fails to take the EU’s interests into account, and declare that the discretionary powers would not be used against European companies, the Commission is likely to either seek arbitration at the WTO or rule the U.S. laws unenforceable on EU territory.”

France called the U.S. bill “unlawful,” due to its “extraterritorial reach,” on July 28, and that it could impact Europeans if enacted, CNN reported. “We have challenged similar texts … in the past,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a July 26 statement. “In order to protect ourselves from the extraterritorial effects of U.S. legislation (and other legislation), we need to adapt our national mechanisms and update European mechanisms.”

Already on June 15, AP reported that Germany and Austria voiced sharp criticism and threatened retaliation, if the latest U.S. sanctions against Moscow affected European businesses involved in piping in Russian natural gas. In a joint statement, Austria’s Chancellor Christian Kern and Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that while it was important for Europe and the United States to form a united front on the issue of Ukraine, “We can’t accept the threat of illegal and extraterritorial sanctions against European companies,” citing a section of the bill that calls for the United States to continue to oppose the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would pump Russian gas to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea.

China Holds Major Parade in Honor of PLA 90th Anniversary