EDITORIAL

The British Factor in 9/11 and All Global Terror

April 20 (EIRNS)—While the world media is focusing attention, legitimately, on Saudi Arabia’s hand behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks—and all subsequent jihadist terror around the globe—and President Barack Obama’s coverup of those crimes, the real authors of that mass kill program are not found in Riyadh or at the White House, but in London. It is fully fitting and proper that British agent and key 9/11 cover-up figure Barack Obama is headed directly from Riyadh to London later this week to pay homage, one more time, to the British Queen.

Saudi Arabia has always been a British Crown possession, dating back to the time of Lawrence of Arabia and the original generation of the House of Saud and the Wahhabi clergy. In fact, British control over the Persian Gulf emirates dates back to the heyday of the British East India Company in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But this British-run partnership with the Saudi Royals was put on a far more formal and active footing in 1985, when Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a self-professed British agent, sealed the Al Yamamah deal with Margaret Thatcher, setting up the oil-for-weapons barter scheme, under which hundreds of billions of dollars were sequestered into British offshore financial havens—to finance terrorism, coups and assassinations around the globe.

That is the part of 9/11 that has been so far missing from the long-overdue public revolt over the hiding of the 28 pages from the original Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11. Where did Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Prince “Bandar Bush” get the money to finance the two lead 9/11 hijackers in San Diego? From Al Yamamah accounts at the Bank of England, that went into his personal bank accounts at Riggs National Bank in Washington. It was his cut of the Al Yamamah loot, at minimum $2 billion.

Without the protection from Londonistan, there would be no Saudi Kingdom, no infrastructure for jihadist terrorism, no global drug epidemic, and no threat of global war of extinction.

From even before the actual 9/11 attacks, which Lyndon LaRouche witnessed on live television, while giving an interview to popular Utah broadcaster Jack Stockwell, LaRouche was warning about a looming Reichstag Fire staged incident to drive the U.S. towards dictatorship under the Bush-Cheney Administration. In December 2000, Executive Intelligence Review had formally petitioned the U.S. State Department to put Great Britain on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. The document detailed scores of formal complaints by governments around the world, against London’s harboring and financing of terrorist and violent separatists.

There were ample opportunities to stop the mass bloodshed, including 9/11, by taking on the real enemy of mankind—the British Empire. The failure to do so in the recent past has brought us to this grave moment of crisis, when a desperate and bankrupt British Empire is prepared to blow up the world rather than cede power. Now is the moment to knock out the Saudi terror machine, along with the British Empire that really runs the show. Break the 9/11 coverup and bring down Obama along with the Anglo-Saudis. It may be mankind’s last best chance for survival.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

It Was NATO—Not Russia—Practicing War Drills in the Baltic

April 20 (EIRNS)—The question that nobody in the West is asking, is, just what was the USS Donald Cook doing with a Polish helicopter in the Baltic Sea so close to a Russian naval base in the first place, when it was overflown numerous times by Russian Su-24 bombers on April 11 and 12? Despite the Pentagon’s claims that these are “routine” operations, as they said about the RC-135 encounter a couple of days later, U.S. ships and planes are operating in these places for a reason, a reason which is informed by the geopolitical confrontation engaged in by the U.S. under Obama.

John Helmer, a veteran Australian news correspondent in Moscow, reported on his “Dances with Bears” blog that much insight into the U.S.-Polish operation can be gleaned from the Polish press, which is anything but unified behind the right-wing government’s Russophobia. The evidence reported in the Polish media and in photographs of the Polish helicopter aboard the Cook, suggest that the U.S. vessel was practice drilling offensive operations against the Russian naval base with the Poles providing anti-submarine protection. The Russians must have known this, and so this explains why they flew so many passes over the ship (20 in total over two days) to the point of disrupting flight operations from the Cook.

In Poland, Helmer reports, analysts go even further, suggesting that Poland has become a frontline state in the confrontation against Russia.

“The Polish Navy is practicing for a U.S. attack on Kaliningrad by guarding the destroyers like the Donald Cook from Russian submarine interception, so we have been caught provoking the Russians right at our very border,” says Polish political analyst Stanislas Balcerac. “And since we have officially taken part in the surprise NATO military maneuver at armed-to-the-teeth Kaliningrad, and that has visibly upset the Russians, we should demand from our American allies compensation for the status of a front-line state, just like Egypt and Israel, which collect $3 billion in aid every year.”

According to Balcerac, the April 11-12 events surrounding the Donald Cook at sea last week have sharpened the policy conflicts between factions in the Polish government, Presidency, and General Staff. Evidence of this factional fight could be seen in early March, when reports emerged of a wave of resignations of senior officers from the Polish military, attributed in part to the working environment created by Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz, who is so Russophobic that he recently described the 2010 crash of the Polish presidential plane in Smolensk, Russia, as a “terrorist act” attributable to Russia.

It turns out that Macierewicz was at NATO headquarters in Brussels meeting with the NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and NATO Gen. Philip Breedlove. According to the statement issued from Warsaw, Macierewicz thanked Breedlove for taking into account Polish views on the deployment of NATO troops into Poland.

NATO-Russia Council Meets for First Time since Ukraine Crisis, Agrees on Little

April 20 (EIRNS)—For the first time in nearly two years, the NATO-Russia Council met today in Brussels, but the comments that followed from both sides indicate that it must have been a highly contentious encounter. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg referred to “a frank and serious discussion,” adding that “NATO Allies and Russia hold very different views.”

Russia’s Ambassador to NATO, Alexander Grushko, said there were no “positive” elements in the U.S./NATO-Russia agenda. “There were statements,” Grushko told reporters in English, reported TASS, “to improve the machinery of these bilateral agreements, but there was no interest on the U.S. side, and today we said very clearly that we are prepared to engage with those countries who want to have sharper bilateral instruments.” Of the three items on the agenda, Ukraine, Afghanistan and “transparency and risk reduction” in military operations, the sides sharply disagreed on at least two of them: Ukraine and risk reduction in military operations.

“NATO and Russia have profound and persistent disagreements. Today’s meeting did not change that,” Secretary General Stoltenberg said.

The Germans, however, were happy that the meeting took place at all, reported TASS. German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer told a press briefing on Wednesday that Germany welcomes the NATO-Russia Council meeting and believes that the Alliance and Moscow should keep up the dialogue to exchange views and avoid possible misunderstandings. “[Foreign] Minister Steinmeier noted that, in his opinion, it is important to maintain dialogue in difficult times to avoid misunderstandings and exchange views and information on maneuvers,” he said. “The German government positively evaluates the fact that it came to this meeting.”

“It is good that the first meeting in nearly two years within the framework of the NATO-Russia Council took place today,” Steinmeier, himself, said. “I spoke out in favor of avoiding the interruption of the lifeline in the talks with Russia, including in the difficult moments when tensions escalated in Ukraine.”

Behind the Façade of Obama’s Saudi Visit: NATO-GCC Military Pact

April 20 (EIRNS)—Although President Obama is personally hated by all of the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, starting with Saudi Arabia, his trip to the Kingdom, followed the next day by his visit to London to meet with the Queen, has an ominous agenda. According to well-placed sources in Washington and in the Gulf, the Thursday, April 21 meeting of GCC leaders with Obama, and the more important closed-door meetings over the past 24 hours with top Gulf security officials, Ashton Carter, John Brennan and the heads of CENTCOM and the Iraq-Syria international force, all focused on plans for a NATO-Gulf Cooperation Council formal pact to establish military dominance over the Middle East and Persian Gulf region. The proposal has been quietly kicking around since the first Obama Administration, but recent events, including the post-sanctions emergence of Iran and the revival of Russia’s strong role in the region, has prompted the NATO-GCC plan to be pushed ahead.

It should be recalled that in April 2013, Britain’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) published a paper “A Return to East of Suez?” advocating a major revival of the British imperial domination over the extended Persian Gulf and Middle East region. Since Britain is bankrupt, this Obama scheme is being touted as a “new security architecture” to preserve Western domination over the region.

Lavrov: Put Violators of Syrian Ceasefire on UN Terror List

April 20 (EIRNS)—Meeting in Moscow yesterday with his French counterpart, Jean-Marc Ayrault, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that those groups that are sabotaging and undermining the Syrian ceasefire should be placed on the United Nations’ list of terrorist organizations.

He specifically named the Saudi-funded Salafist groups, Ahrar Al-Sham and Jaysh-al Islam, as two that should go on the UN list, and indicated that Russia will soon raise this issue at the UN Security Council. Lavrov also warned that Jabhat al-Nusra, which is on the UN list, is “trying to disguise itself under new names, uniting with small groups not included on terrorist lists, [and] hence, trying to escape retribution.”

During negotiations on the ceasefire, Lavrov explained, Russia had wanted the two above-named groups to be put on the UN list; but in order to obtain “some kind of forward movement,” it compromised because “some countries in the region were categorically against those groups being counted among terrorists,” Iran’s PressTV reported. Now, he said, Russia’s Western counterparts must act to prevent any derailing of the process, as this would inevitably lead to a military-based solution which would be “a path to ultimate chaos in the region, to the collapse of yet another state,” as in the cases of Iraq and Libya and now appears to be occurring in Yemen. The Saudi-backed rebel coalition, the High Negotiations Commission (HNC), he said, is a “capricious member of the process.”

Responding to a question as to whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could win the war, Lavrov replied emphatically: “This war cannot be ‘won’ by anyone.” French Foreign Minister Ayrault added here that everything must be done to ensure the success of the political process and praised Russia’s role. His hope, he said, is that it “will help restore statehood in Syria. We should play our role. Russia has played a key role and taken a very important step,” he said. Lavrov underscored that the Geneva talks are not “frozen.” While the HNC pulled out of the talks, he noted, UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura continues his shuttle diplomacy with other opposition groups that do not “put forward ultimata and conditions.”

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Obama Being Overwhelmed with Pressure on 28 Pages

April 20 (EIRNS)—The public pressure on President Obama to declassify the 28-page chapter from the original Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 intensified today, as President Obama arrived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to a cool welcome from King Salman. In his interview with Charlie Rose on the eve of his trip to Saudi Arabia, Britain, and Germany, Obama made clear that he intends to veto the JASTA (Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act) bill if it arrives on his desk, and he also made clear that he has no intention of releasing the 28 pages, dodging the issue by putting the burden on Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who is an Obama stooge. Claims that Clapper is “almost finished” with the intelligence review have been used as a stalling tactic by the White House for three years—when the review actually began under pressure from the Senate Intelligence Committee.

After gloating that Republican Senate leaders were backing Obama’s plans to sink JASTA, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) came out today, reversing his earlier position by announcing that, with minor changes in language, he will lift his hold, and allow the bill to come before the full Senate for a vote next week.

A growing chorus of public officials and Middle East experts have called for the release of the 28 pages in the past day, including Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who told Eleanor Clift of the Daily Beast that he will defer to the judgment of the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunez (R-CA). Representative Nunez came out a week ago, following the “60 Minutes” airing, supporting the release of the chapter.

Bruce Reidel, a former CIA officer now at the Brookings Institution, also called Obama’s bluff on the 28 pages, arguing that the late Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud bin Faisal said the pages from the report should be released, claiming they would exonerate top Royal Family members.

Saudi expert Simon Henderson disputed those Saudi claims in an article today in Foreign Policy, in which he referenced a story he published in 2002, based on reports from members of the Saudi Royal Family, who confirmed to him that two very senior princes had paid al-Qaeda hundreds of millions of dollars in return for a promise that the House of Saudi would not be targetted. He reported that recent efforts to determine whether those arrangements were ever terminated got negative responses.

Former Sen. Bob Graham also weighed in today, with a powerful article published in TCPalm, a Florida publication affiliated with USA Today. Graham started out by saying that the government had not just covered up the truth about Sept. 11, 2001. “It was a result of aggressive deception. Your government has purposely used deceit to withhold the truth. The reason for deceit: to protect the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from its complicity in the murder of 2,977 Americans.” Senator Graham slammed the Obama Administration for stalling its so-called “review” for three years. He detailed the Sarasota, Florida story that shows the deep FBI coverup of a prominent Saudi family, close to the Royals, who colluded with at least three of the hijackers, including Mohammed Atta. He concluded that in the name of justice, national security, and democracy, the truth had to be told.

Leaders of the 9/11 families have also been all over the media in the past 24 hours, with 9/11 widow Terry Strada appearing once again on CNN (for the third time in four days), and Sharon Premoli giving a lengthy interview to National Public Radio. The Florida Bulldog online newspaper, which sued the FBI over the Sarasota documents, published a new statement by four 9/11 widows, Kristen Breitweiser, Mindy Kleinberg, Lorie Van Auken and Patty Casazza, which blasted President Obama for threatening to veto JASTA and for blocking the release of the 28 pages. It read, in part: “Mass murder through terrorism should never be qualified, excused or acceptable under any circumstances. President Obama ought to know that…. JASTA is not a verdict of guilt against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. JASTA merely allows us to bring (it) into a court of law where, if warranted by the evidence, they can and should be held accountable.”

Media Breakthrough in Germany: Focus Magazine Reports on 28 Pages

April 20 (EIRNS)—Finally, there is a media breakthrough on the 28 pages in Germany, with the Focus weekly carrying a lengthy article, starting out with the news that on the eve of Obama’s trip to Saudi Arabia, the fight on the issue has escalated visibly, seen in the Saudi threat to throw U.S. bonds onto the market. The “28 pages,” the article explains, is a mini-dossier kept in a top-secret safe under the strictest security provisions which were “just now broken,” after 13 years, by former Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) who began to talk about them in a CBS interview. (However, actually, Graham has been talking about it as early as 2004 when he gave an interview to Salon magazine about his book Intelligence Matters.)

At the center of Graham’s revelations, are two of the four 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, known to the CIA as al-Qaeda members already before, under surveillance in Kuala Lumpur in 1999 before being officially allowed to enter the U.S.A. at Los Angeles, and Graham said he thinks that neither they alone nor the 17 other hijackers would have been capable of carrying out the terror attacks without backing in the U.S.A. itself. For instance a senior Saudi diplomat, working out of Los Angeles, supplied the hijackers with lodging and money, as was confirmed also by Tim Roemer, who served both on Senator Graham’s Joint Congressional Inquiry, from which the 28 pages were classified, and also on the later 9/11 Commission.

Sean Carter, a lawyer for the families of the 9/11 victims, is mentioned in the Focus article, which also reports that the Obama Administration is lobbying in Congress to prevent the 28 page chapter from being published. The New York Times quotes one of the 9/11 widows as saying that that it is “unbelievable to imagine that our government would rather support the Saudis than its own citizens” (back-translated from German).

U.S. financial experts view the Saudi Foreign Minister Abdel al-Jubeir’s threat of dumping U.S. Treasuries on the market as a bluff, though, because that would seriously backfire against the Saudi economy and paralyze it, Focus writes.

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Obama’s Efficient U.S. Killing Machine: Life Expectancy Declines

April 20 (EIRNS)—The New York Times again reports that life expectancy in the U.S. is shrinking, in its article “Life Expectancy for White Americans Drops Slightly; Analysts Cite Drug Overdoses.” New data from 2014 in a study by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) show that life expectancy for all white Americans fell to 78.8 years from 78.9 a year earlier, a trend which the study noted was “very unusual”—concentrated largely in the 20-50 year old segment of the population.

NCHS statistician Dr. Elizabeth Arias pointed to drug overdoses, liver disease and suicide as the key factors behind the downward trend.

In a separate article, the Times reports that the epidemic of U.S. opiate addiction and deaths is causing a backlash against marijuana legalization. In Vermont, where the state legislature is considering a marijuana legalization bill, the Speaker of the Vermont House, Shap Smith, admitted that “the shadow of the heroin epidemic is something that people think about when they think about the legislation, and they ask themselves, ‘are we sending the right message about legalization?’ ” In 2015, more than 2,000 people died in New England from drug overdoses. Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin is supporting the pot legalization bill, primarily because the state is desperate for revenue.

It is coherent with Obama’s killing policy, and of George W. Bush’s before him, that funding for basic public health has dropped dramatically over the past 15 years. USA Today points to a report by the Trust for America’s Health, which warns that these funding cuts will prevent the U.S. from adequately responding to any number of health threats or emergencies, such as Zika.

A Federal program to help hospitals prepare for emergencies has been slashed by almost half since the peak of funding in fiscal year 2004. Money to specifically help fight the Zika virus “has also evaporated,” and funding to monitor mosquito-borne diseases (i.e., Zika, dengue) fell to $9.3 million in 2013 from $23.5 million in 2006—a 60% drop, according to a 2015 paper published in Emerging Infectious Diseases. Funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decreased to $6.34 billion in 2016 from $7.07 billion in fiscal year 2005.

NEW STRATEGIC PARADIGM

Chinese, Indian, and Russian Foreign Ministers Meet in Moscow, Commit To Expand Cooperation

April 20 (EIRNS)—On April 18, the Foreign Ministers of China, India, and Russia met in Moscow for the 14th trilateral RIC (Russia-India-China) Summit to discuss strengthening their cooperation on a number of strategic fronts—countering terrorism, fostering a world economic recovery and coordinating their positions in addressing “global hotspots,” such as Ukraine and Syria, among others.

These three nations make up core of the BRICS grouping, and RIC is a “dialogue platform which has become an important factor in global politics,” Russia’s Sergey Lavrov said, as reported in Sputnik. Lavrov told Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj that Russia will support India’s presidency of the BRICS, which began Feb. 15, “in every possible way to ensure further strengthening of this significant forum.”

As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated, “the ever-changing global and regional circumstances have underlined the need for closer communication among the three countries and more contributions from them to the settlement of complicated hot-button issue,” the independent online daily BRICS Post reported yesterday. In his bilateral talks with Wang Yi, Lavrov called for direct negotiations among the countries involved to solve disputes in the South China Sea, countering the Philippines unilateral action to take its phony dispute with China to The Hague’s Court of Arbitration which has only exacerbated tensions.

Wang emphasized that the RIC group is committed to enhancing a multipolar world, in which international problems should be dealt with by all nations collectively, and regional disputes settled peacefully. India’s Swaraj called on the RIC group to “lead the way” in getting the international community together to “counter terrorism through joint action, including at the UN,” where Russia and China are permanent members on the UN Security Council.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry statement released yesterday reported Wang Yi’s emphasis on the need for developing nations to have a greater say in global economic affairs, working through such groups as the G20 and the BRICS. China, Russia and India all have a common goal, which is development, Wang said. At this year’s G20 summit in Hangzhou, China wants to discuss with Russia and India how to speed up a world economic recovery. India’s Swaraj echoed that desire, noting that the “BRICS is an important framework in this regard, and we look forward to the active participation of all members in the meetings of BRICS during our presidency this year.”

Germany’s Port of Duisburg Looking Ahead to New Silk Road

April 20 (EIRNS)—Germany’s largest inland port Duisburg, which is celebrating its 300th anniversary this year, reports an expected slump in shipment activities this year, due to shrinking world trade from which many other ports are also suffering. Nonetheless, Duisport is looking forward to the opportunities offered by the New Silk Road, and will invest in expanding its logistical capacities in cooperation with Chinese companies. Port manager Erich Staake told the media yesterday that rail transport from China to Duisburg will be even more efficient from next year on, when the railroad bridge across the Bosporus Strait will be opened, so that trains can get to Europe more quickly via Iran on the southern route.

Duisport, on the Rhine River, presently employs 46,000 workers, and plans for an increase to 50,000, with new facilities being built at the port where also larger ships can berth, so that a massive increase of transport by ship on the Rhine to and from the Dutch port of Rotterdam becomes possible. Rail connections will also be expanded, to open up more inland trade with the port of Duisburg, Staake said.

China’s Cosco Reports Impressive Growth at Piraeus

April 20 (EIRNS)—The Chinese company Cosco announced that the Piraeus Container Terminal (PCT) in Greece continues to expand throughput at terminals II and III, with the Piraeus port handling 9.6% more containers in the first quarter of the year on an annual basis, for a total of 807,000 containers. In March of this year, growth increased by 3.2% year-on-year, with 275,100 containers handled, compared to 266,500 in March 2015.

The increase is due to the new rail connection that links the port directly to the main north-south rail line, enabling containers to be shipped to countries in Central and Eastern Europe by rail. This category has increased from less than 2,500 containers in 2014, to up to 8,000 units in 2015; in the first quarter of 2016, it had risen to 5,000 containers.

The goal is to reach 3.3 million containers this year, compared with 3.03 million in 2015, and 2.98 million in 2014. The current capacity of terminals II and III stands at 4.3 million units per year, but with the addition of the new Western Terminal III, the port’s capacity will expand to 6.2 million containers on an annual basis.