THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2019

Volume 6, Number 201

EIR Daily Alert Service

P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390

• The World As You Thought You Knew It Is Disintegrating
• White House Counsel Blasts Democrats’ Impeachment Inquiry Star Chamber Proceeding
• Trump Informs Media, U.S. is NOT a Police Force for Southwest Asia
• President Trump Calls Iraq War America’s Greatest Mistake
• White House Confirms, the U.S. Does Not Support the Turkish Invasion of Syria
• Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces Hints It May Join With Damascus To Oppose Turks’ Incursion
• Carney-Bloomberg Climate-Related Financial Disclosures Task Force Maps Bankers’ Climate Dictatorship
• Dutch To Investigate Ukrainian Role in Downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

EDITORIAL

The World As You Thought You Knew It Is Disintegrating

Oct. 9 (EIRNS)—If it seems that, nearly every day, yet another institution which appeared to be indestructible is collapsing before your eyes, you are not imagining things. Over the past years we have witnessed the corporate media relinquish any pretense of having any relationship to reality. The emergence of eco-fascist gangs demanding the destruction of industrial society and depopulation are trying to destroy the very notion of human progress—note that many people smiled and nodded when the abused child Greta Thunberg told the world to give up “fairy tales of eternal economic growth.” The Vatican, certainly deemed a permanent institution by its friends and its foes alike, is shaken to its roots under the weight of the sex scandals, a mass shortage of priests, and now, a Pope openly sponsoring Satanic policies, including a Synod, ongoing now, in which priests and bishops are celebrating pagan rights and supporting eco-fascism and depopulation. Then there is Wall Street, which is now on life support from the Federal Reserve printing presses, and, together with the City of London, may not survive the current year. Not to mention the British Parliamentary system, which is tearing itself apart trying to prevent the implementation of the British people’s will to exit the EU and regain national sovereignty.

Add to this mix of collapsing institutions the Congress of the United States of America. As Counsel to the President Pat Cipollone clearly demonstrates in a letter delivered yesterday to the Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives—the “People’s House”—this core institution of the American System has been transformed into a “Star Chamber,” like that of the British Crown, in which law is dispensed with altogether, to follow the whim of the royalty. What is worse, “Lord” Schiff has turned the House into an asset of a totally corrupted sector of the intelligence community, which collaborated with British, Australian, and Italian government operatives, as well as the neo-Nazi leadership of Ukraine’s former government (put in power by the Obama Administration), in an effort to bring down the President of the United States—i.e., treason.

Cipollone writes that the House Democrats have: “denied the President the right to cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses, to receive transcripts of testimony, to have access to evidence, to have counsel present, and many other basic rights guaranteed to all Americans. You have conducted your proceedings in secret. You have violated civil liberties and the separation of powers by threatening Executive Branch officials, claiming that you will seek to punish those who exercise fundamental constitutional rights and prerogatives. All of this violates the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent. Never before in our history has the House of Representatives—under the control of either political party—taken the American people down the dangerous path you seem determined to pursue.”

The President is rightly refusing to participate in this criminal enterprise, while the now-expanding Attorney General’s investigation of the attempted coup known as “Russiagate,” and now the fake impeachment, will soon be putting these “Star Chamber” would-be judges on trial for their very real crimes.

LaRouche PAC and EIR have documented these criminal acts from the beginning, and demonstrated that the same forces, even many of the same individuals, ran the prosecution of Lyndon LaRouche in the 1980s—for essentially the same reasons. His posthumous exoneration today will explode the illusions which have held the American population subject to information warfare over these past 35 years. Call on the President to exonerate LaRouche.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

White House Counsel Blasts Democrats’ Impeachment Inquiry Star Chamber Proceeding

Oct. 9 (EIRNS)—White House Counsel Pat Cipollone delivered a letter Tuesday to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Eliot Engel, Congressman Elijah Cummings, and Congressman (so-called) Adam Schiff.  In it, he provides the legal and Constitutional basis as to why the White House will not cooperate with the Star Chamber proceeding presently conducted by Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi. Since the content of the letter has been repeatedly mischaracterized by the media, it is important to quote parts of it with annotations. Cipollone’s full letter is posted to the White House website.

Here is the beginning:

“I write on behalf of President Donald J. Trump in response to your numerous, legally unsupported demands made as part of what you have labeled—contrary to the Constitution of the United States and all past bipartisan precedent—as an ‘impeachment inquiry.’ As you know, you have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process.

“For example, you have denied the President the right to cross-examine witnesses; to call witnesses; to receive transcripts of testimony; to have access to evidence; to have counsel present, and many other basic rights guaranteed to all Americans. You have conducted your proceedings in secret. You have violated civil liberties and the separation of powers by threatening Executive Branch officials, claiming that you will seek to punish those who exercise fundamental constitutional rights and prerogatives. All of this violates the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent. Never before in our history has the House of Representatives—under the control of either political party—taken the American people down the dangerous path you seem determined to pursue.

“Put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen. Many Democrats now apparently view impeachment not only as a means to undo the democratic results of the last election, but as a strategy to influence the next election, which is barely more than a year away. As one member of Congress explained, he is ‘concerned that if we don’t impeach the President, he will get re-elected’ [interview with Rep. Al Green, MSNBC, May 5, 2019). Your highly partisan and unconstitutional effort threatens grave and lasting damage to our democratic institutions, to our system of free elections, and to the American people.”

Specifically, the letter notes that President Trump declassified the read-out of his entire conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in order for the public to see that there was nothing wrong with the call (let alone the hyperventilated claims made by the bogus whistleblowers). That is why Adam Schiff made up a parody of the call and presented it to the American public as fact, while lying about the whistleblower’s contacts with his office prior to filing the complaint.

Schiff’s “parody” has him trying to talk like a mafia don when representing Trump’s side of the conversation in words nowhere close to what Trump said.  Byron York reported last night in the Washington Examiner that the first bogus whistleblower is a Democrat who had a professional relationship with one of the 2020 Democratic candidates for President. The bogus whistleblower claims that he went to Schiff because the complaint was receiving insufficient attention by the CIA, despite the fact that that agency apparently made a criminal referral to the Justice Department for a possible campaign finance violation. None was found by DOJ, as there wasn’t one.

Schiff lied outright that the whistleblower had never been in contact with his office, and the bogus whistleblower never told Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson about these contacts. Even the Washington Post recognized the gravity of this lie, awarding Schiff four “Pinocchios” for it. As previously reported by EIR, Atkinson is a likely coup participant, having migrated to his present position from the National Security Division of the DOJ, which has been at the center of the coup. In order to accommodate the hearsay complaint of this bogus whistleblower, Atkinson appears to have revamped the procedures for processing such complaints.

Cipollone continues: “In the history of our Nation, the House of Representatives has never attempted to launch an impeachment inquiry against the President without a majority of the House taking political accountability for that decision by voting to authorize such a dramatic constitutional step. Here, House leadership claims to have initiated the gravest inter-branch conflict contemplated under our Constitution by means of nothing more than a press conference at which the Speaker of the House simply announced an ‘official impeachment inquiry.’ Your contrived process is unprecedented in the history of the Nation, and lacks the necessary authorization for a valid impeachment proceeding.”  Cipollone provides ample constitutional and case law footnotes in support of this position.

Cipollone then goes on to document the abuses which have already occurred in the Star Chamber proceeding. The Republicans on the Schiff committee have been denied the right to issue subpoenas for evidence, the proceedings have been conducted in secret, with Democrats leaking cherry-picked portions of testimony to the press; the President is not allowed representation in the proceeding; the Republicans on the committee cannot cross-examine witnesses or call witnesses, and there is no mechanism for disclosing or presenting evidence exculpatory to the President, such as the Kurt Volker testimony Oct. 3, widely viewed as leaving the Democrats’ case in shambles. Further, the Schiff committee has sent letters out, not subpoenas, letters, saying that failure to respond, often in two days’ time, or an assertion of any privilege, would be considered a criminal obstruction of justice. They told State Department Counsel that any assertion of privilege would result in the government salaries of those asserting the privilege being withheld.

Cipollone writes: “The Committees’ assertions on these points amount to nothing more than strong-arm tactics designed to rush proceedings without any regard for due process and the rights of individuals and of the Executive Branch.  Threats aimed at intimidating individuals who assert these basic rights are attacks on civil liberties which should profoundly concern all Americans.”

Schiff and the Democrats have floated a variety of equally abhorrent schemes in the name of protecting the identity of the “whistleblower.”  These include holding their appearance in an undisclosed location, in secret, masking them and disguising their voice.  The Constitution allows all those accused the fundamental right to confront their accuser so that whatever story might be told can be impeached. These planned measures violate that due process right. There is rampant speculation in Washington that the reason for this extraordinary gambit is that the actual identity of those making the claims will trace right back to such entities as Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, and other key figures in the coup itself. The rush to judgment is designed to conceal these origins, inclusive of Schiff’s role as a fact witness in how this complaint came to be.

Cipollone ends his letter as follows: “For the foregoing reasons, the President cannot allow your constitutionally illegitimate proceedings to distract him and those in the Executive Branch from their work on behalf of the American people.  The President has a country to lead.  The American people elected him to do this job, and he remains focused on fulfilling his promises to the American people….”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Trump Informs Media, U.S. Is Not a Police Force for Southwest Asia

Oct. 9 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump responded to media questions at the White House regarding his Oct. 7 decision to pull U.S. troops back from Syria’s border with Turkey, and elaborated his intention to get the U.S. out of the endless wars bequeathed to him by his predecessors. “I don’t want to stay there for the next 40 years,” Trump told them. “It’s not going to do anything. … I campaigned on the fact that I was going to bring our soldiers home, and bring them home as rapidly as possible.” Part of keeping that promise, Trump said, is not thrusting U.S. forces into even more conflicts that have no end in sight, reported Military Times. “We interject ourselves into wars, and we interject ourselves into tribal wars and revolutions and all of these things that are very—they’re not the kind of thing that you settle the way we’d like to see it settled. It just doesn’t work that way. … And it’s time to come back home.” The President said one of the things he hates the most, “I have to sign letters often to parents of young soldiers that were killed.  And it’s the hardest thing I have to do in this job. I hate it,” repeating, “I hate it.”

When asked about the hostile response of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to the U.S. decision, Trump replied that he can understand their side of it. “But if you go by the other side, that means we should never, ever come home…. We’re willing to do what we have to do, but there has to be an end-game. And if you stay, it’s going to be the same thing,” he said. “We’re not a police force,” Military Times quoted him as saying.

In a lengthy tweet, Oct. 7, widely cut by the media and misquoted, the President wrote: “The United States was supposed to be in Syria for 30 days, that was many years ago. We stayed and got deeper and deeper into battle with no aim in sight. When I arrived in Washington, ISIS was running rampant in the area. We quickly defeated 100% of the ISIS Caliphate, including capturing thousands of ISIS fighters, mostly from Europe. But Europe did not want them back, they said you keep them USA! I said ‘NO, we did you a great favor and now you want us to hold them in U.S. prisons at tremendous cost. They are yours for trials.’ They again said ‘NO,’ thinking, as usual, that the U.S. is always the ‘sucker,’ on NATO, on Trade, on everything. The Kurds fought with us, but were paid massive amounts of money and equipment to do so. They have been fighting Turkey for decades. I held off this fight for almost 3 years, but it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home. WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN. Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds will now have to figure the situation out, and what they want to do with the captured ISIS fighters in their ‘neighborhood.’ They all hate ISIS, have been enemies for years. We are 7000 miles away and will crush ISIS again if they come anywhere near us!”

President Trump Calls Iraq War America’s Greatest Mistake

Oct. 9 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump tweeted today: “The United States has spent EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS fighting and policing in the Middle East. Thousands of our Great Soldiers have died or been badly wounded. Millions of people have died on the other side. GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY! We went to war under a false & now disproven premise, WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. There were NONE! Now we are slowly & carefully bringing our great soldiers & military home. Our focus is on the BIG PICTURE! THE USA IS GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!”

White House Confirms, the U.S. Does Not Support the Turkish Invasion of Syria

Oct. 9 (EIRNS)—The Turkish invasion of northeastern Syria, dubbed “Operation Peace Spring,” officially began at 16:00 local time (13:00 UTC), today. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the announcement in a pair of tweets this morning, stating: “The Turkish Armed Forces, together with the Syrian National Army [aka Free Syrian Army], just launched #OperationPeaceSpring against PKK/YPG andDaesh terrorists in northern Syria. Our mission is to prevent the creation of a terror corridor across our southern border, and to bring peace to the area.”  The reference to PKK/YPG is to the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey, which Erdogan insists is allied with the Syrian-Kurd People’s Protection Units (YPG) that had U.S. backing in the anti-ISIS fight. In a second tweet, he stated, “#OperationPeaceSpring will neutralize terror threats against Turkey and lead to the establishment of a safe zone, facilitating the return of Syrian refugees to their homes. We will preserve Syria’s territorial integrity and liberate local communities from terrorists.” The Turkish Defense Ministry similarly stated that the invasion would create “the necessary conditions for the return of displaced Syrians to their homes and lands.”

President Donald Trump issued a statement saying that the U.S. does not support the Turkish operation. “This morning, Turkey, a NATO member, invaded Syria. The United States does not endorse this attack and has made it clear to Turkey that this operation is a bad idea. There are no American soldiers in the area,” Trump said. He vowed that the U.S. will hold Turkey to its commitments to protect civilians and to ensure that no humanitarian crisis ensues from its operation: “In addition, Turkey is now responsible for ensuring all ISIS fighters being held captive remain in prison and that ISIS does not reconstitute in any way, shape, or form. We expect Turkey to abide by all of its commitments, and we continue to monitor the situation closely.”

Just prior to the beginning of the operation, Erdogan called Russian President Vladimir Putin and told him that the planned operation will bring peace and stability to Syria and that it will also pave the way for a political process in Syria. According to the Kremlin readout, Putin “urged his Turkish partners to carefully consider the situation so as not to damage the overall efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis.” Russia, Iran and Turkey are the guarantors of the “Astana process” effort to bring peace to Syria.

Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces Hints It May Join with Damascus To Oppose Turks’ Incursion

Oct. 9 (EIRNS)—The launching of the Turkish “Peace Spring” operation in northeastern Syria may accelerate the rapprochement between the U.S.-backed Kurdish SDF and the Syrian government in Damascus. Already, yesterday, two senior Kurdish officials, in interviews with Western media, said they were exploring that option in the face of the Turkish invasion and the U.S. military pull-back announced on Oct. 6. Gen. Mazloum Kobani Abdi, the military commander of the SDF, told NBC News yesterday, that he’s now considering “what would have been unthinkable a few years ago”: partnering with Syrian President Bashar Assad to fight the Turkish forces. “This is one of the options that we have on the table,” Mazloum said.

Another Kurdish official, Badran Jia Kurd, spoke similarly to Reuters. “If America vacates the area, and especially the border area, for certain we, as a self-administration and as the SDF, will be forced to study all the available options,” Jia Kurd said. “At that time we may hold talks with Damascus or the Russian side to fill the void or block the Turkish attack, so this may develop, and there could be meetings and contacts in case of a vacuum,” he said.

Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad welcomed such a possibility. “Anyone not loyal to the homeland and who sold it out for cheapest price [a reference to the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army] will be thrown out of history. We have warned multiple times against these conspiracies against the homeland and the people of Syria,” Mekdad told the pro-government Al-Watan daily on Oct. 8, reported Kurdish media network Rudaw. However, “in the end, the homeland welcomes all its sons and we want to resolve all the Syrian issues in a positive way and away from violence but in a way that preserves every inch of Syrian land.”

Moscow also wants to push things in that direction. “We contacted both the representatives of the Kurdish side and the representatives of the government [Syria],” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during a press conference this morning, reported TASS, “and confirmed that we are encouraging them to start a dialogue to resolve the problems of this part of Syria, including the problems of ensuring security on the Turkish-Syrian border. As before, this is the only way to achieve stability.” Lavrov reiterated that the Russian position is “unequivocal, based on the need to solve all the problems of this part of the Syrian Arab Republic through a dialogue between the central government in Damascus and representatives of the Kurdish communities that traditionally reside in this territory.” Moscow is committed to promoting the dialogue between Kurds and Damascus, since it sees that as “the only way toward stability,” Lavrov declared.

ECONOMY

Carney-Bloomberg Climate-Related Financial Disclosures Task Force Maps Bankers’ Climate Dictatorship

Oct. 9 (EIRNS)—Industry-extinction advocate Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, warned major corporations that they have two years to agree to rules for reporting climate risks in the context of his “green finance” push—i.e., how much CO2 is emitted from your investment. He said in no uncertain terms that if they don’t, central banks and other global regulators will draft their own rules and make them compulsory. Carney was speaking at the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) summit that took place Oct. 8 in Tokyo, under the aegis of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the TCFD Consortium of Japan

Launched in 2015 by the Financial Stability Board, the TCFD is the brainchild of Carney, who was then FSB chairman, and Michael Bloomberg, who is TCFD chairman. Bloomberg claims to have already recruited four-fifths of the top 1,100 companies operating from the G20 countries to disclose climate-related risks in line with some of the TCFD recommendations.

“The TCFD needs to reach a definitive view of what counts as a high-quality disclosure before they become mandatory. In my view the next two reporting periods should balance the urgency of the task and the imperative of getting it right,” Carney said.

“This is best delivered by the current process of disclosure by the users of capital, reaction by the suppliers of capital, and adjustment of these standards to ensure that the TCFD metrics are as comparable, efficient and as decision-useful as possible.”

Carney said this is required for green investors to know what companies to invest in.

Carney said: “In convening this summit, [host] Prime Minister Abe has rightly highlighted the enormous investments that will be necessary to deliver these objectives. With an estimated $90 trillion of infrastructure spending expected between 2015 and 2030, the right decisions now can make sure those investments are both financially rewarding and environmentally sustainable.”

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Dutch To Investigate Ukrainian Role in Downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

Oct. 9 (EIRNS)—Dutch lawmaker Chris van Dam—the spokesman for the parliamentary investigation into the 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur—announced that he is launching another investigation into the role of Ukraine in the downing of the Boeing 777. The investigators will explore why Kiev did not order the closure of the country’s airspace over the war-ravaged Donbas ahead of the downing on July 17, 2014, which killed all 298 onboard. Last week, van Dam told RTL broadcaster that “the importance of a full fact-finding investigation into the closure of airspace above eastern Ukraine is about more than just state liability.”

In 2015, the Dutch Safety Board ruled that there had been sufficient grounds for Kiev to close the airspace at the time.

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