EDITORIAL
Putin and China Set the New Agenda
Aug. 10 (EIRNS)—Following the Aug. 9 St. Petersburg meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, high-level delegations from both countries are meeting Aug. 11 in a trilateral (foreign, defense and security ministers) working meeting to set a collaborative course for ending the Syrian war. Russia and Turkey plan to expand bilateral trade to $100 billion per year, a threefold increase over previous peaks. The North-South Corridor project will now engage Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Iran, and will fold into China’s One Belt, One Road project.
The Russia-Turkey partnership will bring greater stability to the entire Caspian Sea, Balkan, Caucasus region, extending the zone of Eurasian security and prosperity farther west.
EIR Founding Editor Lyndon LaRouche emphasized on Wednesday that these developments must not be seen as discrete actions. They are part of a new global dynamic, being led by Russia’s Putin and by the Chinese. On Sept. 2-3, Putin will be hosting the Vladivostok Eastern Economic Forum, which will now be attended by both Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and by South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Following the G20 summit, hosted by China, India will be hosting the annual BRICS leaders summit, which takes place in early October. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi is in India this week, to further advance those crucial bilateral relations, and Indian Prime Minister Modi spoke by video conference with Russian President Putin on Wednesday, commemorating the opening of the first of five Russian-built nuclear power plants under construction in India, and arranging a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20.
LaRouche cited Putin’s leadership as defining a new direction for global progress. “This is a global process being steered by Putin and China. They have effectively taken charge of a new direction in policy, replacing rivalry with collaboration.” LaRouche noted that this process was fully underway in the middle of 2015, when Putin attended the Chinese celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Asia. It is now blossoming and leaving behind the pathetic old geopolitical games of Barack Obama, the British and NATO.
The developments in St. Petersburg this week will have a powerful impact in Germany, which is facing economic doom unless the policies of Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schäuble are immediately abandoned. Look for dramatic shifts in Germany, which are now urgent. A number of recent studies, published since the fraudulent so-called ECB/EU bank “stress tests” have concluded that Deutsche Bank is doomed, is already a “dead bank walking,” and only the kind of reorganization that has been promoted by Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, for weeks, can now save the German economy from ruin. LaRouche has warned repeatedly that the collapse of Deutsche Bank and the destruction of the German economy must be avoided at all costs, because such a collapse will greatly increase the danger of world war.
The Putin-Erdogan developments, including the extension of the China One Belt, One Road program into the North-South Corridor running from the Persian Gulf up into Europe, afford the perfect opportunity for Germany to change.
The same is true for the United States, where a tremendous policy battle is underway, beneath the surface of the Presidential electoral disaster. The push for Glass-Steagall in both party platforms, and the fact that a number of Congressional progressive Democrats and the AFL-CIO have denounced the coup d’état against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, in an open letter to John Kerry, are indications that the United States is also ripe for a revolution in policy.
The Schiller Institute has now produced the proceedings of the historic June 2016 Berlin conference, which spelled out the imminent danger of world war but provided the pathway to a new future of peace and prosperity. That report, which defines the policy guidelines for the next American Presidency and for a new governing coalition in Germany, is already circulating and is a blueprint for the kind of new policy paradigm that Putin and the Chinese are driving.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Are the Guns of August About To Erupt In Ukraine?
Aug. 10 (EIRNS)—Are the Guns of August erupting in southeastern Ukraine’s Donbas region? That’s the implication of an RFE/RL story, dated today, on the nightly shooting across the line of contact. “It’s hot as hell, and it’s about to get hotter,” the story reports from Maryinka, where snipers from both sides shoot at each other across an open field every night. “When the Sun goes down, the guns start blazing.” This is what life is like in this part of Ukraine, now, 28 months after the conflict began and a year-and-a-half after the Minsk II agreement. “But the armistice is unraveling fast as fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists has escalated to levels not seen since more furious phases of the conflict in the Donbas…. Casualties, both civilian and military, are mounting.”
A Bloomberg wire reported, yesterday, that another Ukrainian soldier was killed in fighting and the regime artillery hit 11 civilian areas overnight and into yesterday, killing two civilians.
According to a report in Sputnik, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke by phone yesterday, and the conflict in eastern Ukraine was high on their agenda. “The sides continued discussion of urgent issues related to progress in the implementation of Minsk accords and stressed the need to synchronize steps aimed at the political settlement of the crisis in eastern Ukraine with resolution of security issues,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Confirms U.S.-Russia Discussion on Humanitarian Relief for Aleppo
Aug. 10 (EIRNS)—Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, confirmed yesterday that the U.S. and Russia are discussing possible organization of humanitarian deliveries into northern Aleppo on a permanent basis using the Castello highway, TASS reports. He also said that Russia is ready to support the United Nations’ call to impose obligatory weekly 48-hour humanitarian pauses to offer assistance to Syria’s citizens, but with a caveat. “Two weeks ago our British partners initiated a press statement on a 48-hour humanitarian truce. We said definitely that we support this initiative but would like to supplement it with a reservation that it is not applicable to terrorists,” he said.
UN officials had said earlier that they need the 48-hour pauses because, without them, it’s too dangerous to deliver relief supplies to Aleppo. “We have supplies ready to roll, food rations, hospital supplies, ambulances, fuel for generators, water supplies and more,” UN Undersecretary-General Stephen O’Brien said after briefing the Security Council. “We could deliver these within 24 to 48 hours if we have safe access.”
Her Majesty Fully Backs the ‘Peaceful’ Muslim Brotherhood
Aug. 10 (EIRNS)—Her Majesty has once again shown her true colors as the protector of terrorism. A British Home Office guideline has now been issued to allow members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood to seek asylum in Britain, which analysts see as a “tacit” admission of the group’s peaceful nature, according to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency.
Issued last week, the guideline, Anadolu reports, says that “high-profile or politically-active members, especially those who have taken part in protests in Egypt, ‘may be able to show they are at risk of persecution, including the possibility of detention [by the Egyptian authorities], where they may face ill-treatment, unfair trials and disproportionate punishments.’…
“ ‘Additionally, high-profile supporters or those perceived to support the Muslim Brotherhood—such as journalists—may also be similarly at risk of persecution. It would be appropriate to grant in such cases,’ it added.”
The report has triggered official protests in Egypt where the British Embassy stated that the U.K. would not consider asylum requests from Brotherhood members resident outside the U.K., according to Anadolu. Speaking at a press conference in Cairo, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said, “Egypt doesn’t see the decision as positive for the two countries’ relations.”
The guideline was celebrated by the U.K.-based Muslim Brotherhood’s Arab Orient Center for Strategic and Civilization Studies, whose director Zuhair Salim said the guidelines prove that the U.K. review of the Brotherhood had been definitively closed. “ ‘It is tantamount to an admission [by the U.K.] of the Brotherhood’s peaceful nature,’ he told Anadolu Agency.
NEW WORLD ECONOMIC ORDER
Turkey, Russia To Create Tripartite Mechanism on Syria
Aug. 10 (EIRNS)—The St. Petersburg summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has produced the first step in cooperation between the two countries on resolving the Syrian conflict. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavusoglu announced that a tripartite mechanism will be created made up of representatives from the three countries’ intelligence agencies, foreign ministries, and military, as part of an effort to put all these functions under one roof. The two parties will hold their first meeting in St. Petersburg on Aug. 11. Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) chief Hakan Fidan and representatives from the Foreign Ministry and Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) left today for St. Petersburg.
“The first concrete step [between Turkey and Russia]: Previously, there were different mechanisms between us on Syria, between militaries, foreign ministries and intelligence services. Now, we [will] establish a threefold mechanism,” Foreign Minister Çavusoglu told state-run Anadolu Agency today.
Also a direct line of communications has been set up between the Turkish and Russian Chiefs of General Staff. “We have agreed to be in close contact in order to avoid such incidents,” said President Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin, referring to the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 over Syria by Turkish fighters last November. “In this frame, our Chief of General Staff and the Russian Chief of General Staff have reestablished a direct line. They are in talks on this,” said Kalin, speaking to the private broadcaster AHaber on Aug. 10, reported Hurriyet Daily News.
Cavusoglu said that although Turkey and Russia had different views on Syria, they were on the same page regarding the declaration of a ceasefire, providing humanitarian aid and finding a political solution. He said Turkey did not approve of the siege of Aleppo, but they agreed to “inform their Russian counterparts about the locations of civilians and moderate opposition groups and will ask to first get focused on the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria,” reported Hurriyet.
The Turkish minister also emphasized that ties with Russia should not affect Turkey’s ties to the West, but did note that Turkey has been facing political obstacles from the EU in the last 15 years, saying, “If the West loses Turkey one day, it will not be because of Turkey’s good ties with Russia, China, Central Asian or Islamic countries but because of its mistakes,” Hurriyet quoted him as saying.
The Hindu Sees Upcoming China-India Talks as an Effort To Develop a ‘Consensus’
Aug. 10 (EIRNS)—According to Indian and Chinese analysts, this week’s visit to India by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is of particular importance. The objective of the visit is to “communicate with the Indian side about how to carry forward consensus between the two leaders and enhance mutually-beneficial cooperation in different fields in a bid to make sure that the relationship will keep growing as planned,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Han Chunying told a press briefing in Beijing, reported The Hindu.
The Hindu pointed out that Chinese state media have begun to suggest that “India-China ties should focus on amplifying their economic agenda, which requires urgent attention.” India’s exports to China “have dropped 16.7% year-on-year in the first seven months of the year, Chinese customs data showed on Monday, suggesting that a large number of Indian enterprises are having a hard time exploring the Chinese market amid simmering tensions between the two countries,” a write-up in a state-run daily Global Times observed, The Hindureported.
Although it is not clear what Wang Yi will discuss in New Delhi this week, there is no doubt that, beside the still-unresolved border dispute and associated problems along the Himalayas, a number of other irritants in bilateral relations have cropped up. To name a few, the China-proposed China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) passes through that part of Kashmir which India considers its territory and not that of Pakistan; India’s response to The Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration’s recent decision on the South China Sea dispute is not clearly supportive of China; China’s refusal to endorse India to become a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG); and the recent Indian decision not to extend visas to three Chinese media persons for certain violations, have generated negative media outcries in both the countries.
Perhaps, this is what Liu Zongyi of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, meant during his conversation with The Hinduwhen he stressed that “geo-economics rather than geopolitics,” should rule India-China ties. “With India resolving the General Sales Tax (GST) issue, Chinese companies will now have more opportunities to invest. We cherish these opportunities,” he observed.
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
British Paper Picks Up on Call To Nationalize Deutsche Bank
Aug. 10, (EIRNS)—The Daily Express in Britain has picked up on the call by German economist Martin Hellwig, of the Max Planck Institute, to nationalize Deutsche Bank before it collapses. Under the headline “Deutsche Bank Teetering on Edge of CRISIS,” the British tabloid reported accurately on Hellwig’s weekend interview with the Aug. 7 issue of Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung., in which Hellwig was quoted, “In the last 20 years the investment bankers controlled the bank and sucked it dry. Nationalization in an emergency could be a step towards more rationality in the banking world.”
The Express went on to quote Max Keiser, who described Deutsche Bank as “technically insolvent” and running a “Ponzi scheme.” He added, “The bank needs to go out of business, because they are not solvent. But politicians, including [Finance Minister Wolfgang] Schäuble, allow for financial engineering products to come onto the market that mask insolvency. It’s dead, it’s insolvent, the bank is dead…. This is a dead bank walking.”
The Bank of England’s Bid To Increase QE Flops
Aug. 10 (EIRNS)—The Bank of England’s much-touted new Quantitative Easing program is already flopping. The first purchase of bonds by the BOE in its new QE program failed on Tuesday. While the Bank offered to buy back £1.17 billion of long-dated gilts with maturities of 15 years or more, it was only able to buy £1.11 billion, leaving a shortfall of £52 million. This is the first time it has failed to attract sellers, as investors chose to hold onto their government bonds. The program calls for buying a total of £60 billion.
The Guardian quotes Jason Simpson, a U.K. rate strategist at French bank Société Générale, who remarked that, “it is a little surprising that this comes on the first week … it is quite early in the whole process, which will be a worry for the Bank of England.”
The England’s central bank released a statement saying it will carry on, hoping sales will pick up. One problem is that pension funds and insurance companies are reluctant to sell their bonds, and the other is that there are fewer bonds available and they are starting to sell at a price above their face value. The Guardian suggests that the whole QE program has run its course.
U.S. ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL
Wilkerson Revelations Open Up Cheney for Criminal Prosecution
Aug. 10 (EIRNS)—On closer evaluation, the Aug. 8 interview with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.), who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, opens up former Vice President Dick Cheney to criminal prosecution for his cover-up of the Saudi role in 9/11, and for explicitly soliciting lies to justify the attack on Iraq in March 2003.
As Wilkerson made clear in his interview with 28Pages.org, Vice President Cheney, on ten separate occasions, tried to force Secretary of State Colin Powell to insert claims that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and was providing material support to al-Qaeda during the period leading up to the attacks. Each time Cheney tried to insert the lies into Powell’s prepared statement before the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, Powell pushed back. But, according to Wilkerson, on the very eve of the scheduled Powell speech, CIA Director George Tenet and his Deputy Director John McLaughlin showed up with “new eyewitness evidence” that Saddam was behind 9/11. Powell relented and allowed the claims of Saddam’s alleged 9/11 links to be included in his testimony. It later came out that the “new” intelligence was actually a year-old discredited “confession” by tortured al-Qaeda figure Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi and was totally false.
Wilkerson also recounted that Dick Cheney deployed top national security aides Scooter Libby and John Hannah to make sure that there was no mention of Saudi Arabia’s links to the 9/11 hijackers and that no real investigation was ever launched into the Saudi sponsorship. The coverup of the 28-page chapter of the Joint Congressional Inquiry was part of a larger Cheney-led fraud, to secure both the U.S.-Saudi “special relationship” despite the Saudi complicity in 9/11, and to assure that the U.S. went to war to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Wilkerson was blunt about the Saudi claims that there was no evidence of any Saudi links to the 9/11 hijackers: “It’s utter hogwash with regard to the entire set of circumstances surrounding 9/11 in my view. As far as I know, there never was an official investigation of so many of the things that are intimated [in the 28 pages], not least of which is a really hard look by the intelligence community at the ultimate question of (Saudi) government knowledge, government direction, even government strategy associated with the Salafist movement in general, but, more specifically, organizations like al-Qaeda.”
Wilkerson added that the 9/11 Commission’s work was doomed from the moment that Philip Zelikow was named as Staff Director. “It was clear to me from the very beginning that he was there as a control agent. I didn’t know how definitively he would control the process until later. He was tuned into the administration. He was tuned into what the administration wanted.”
With Friends Like Mike Morrell, Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Need Enemies
Aug. 10 (EIRNS)—Just a day after he endorsed Hillary Clinton for President, former CIA Acting and Deputy Director Michael Morrell, who was personally implicated in the Benghazi lies, gave an interview to TV anchor Charlie Rose, in which he called for covert assassinations of Russians and Iranians inside Syria, as well as covert operations to remove President Bashar al-Assad from power. The interview triggered an immediate backlash, that was hardly helpful to Clinton, who is now being surrounded by neocons calling for direct U.S. involvement to overthrow Assad, even if it means jumping further into bed with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Right after she secured the Democratic Party nomination, close allies and campaign supporters, including Leon Panetta, Jonathan Bash, and Michelle Flournoy all issued calls for greater U.S. involvement in regime change schemes against the Syrian government.
Adding to Clinton’s woes, 44 new e-mails, previously undisclosed, from her tenure as Secretary of State, have raised questions about a cozy relationship between the Department and the Clinton Foundation. In recent Congressional testimony, FBI Director Comey refused to say whether the Bureau was still investigating the Clinton Foundation and possible conflicts of interest. A news story by the New York Post’s Paul Sperry today also noted that, just before leaving the State Department, Clinton signed a “trusted travelers” status agreement with Saudi Arabia, giving Saudi students and workers privileged access to the United States, despite the fact that she was well aware of Saudi funding of jihadi terrorist groups. At least two of those Saudi “students” were caught profiling a commercial Air West flight from Phoenix, testing whether they could access the cockpit. Their tickets for the flight were purchased by the Saudi government.
OTHER
Wall Street Coup against Brazil’s Rightful President Moves Into Impeachment Trial Stage
Aug. 10 (EIRNS)—In the early hours of Wednesday, after 16 hours of debate in which many Senators were busier watching the Olympics on their cellphones than listening, the Brazilian Senate voted 59-21 to proceed with the impeachment trial of President Dilma Rousseff, which is expected to be concluded by the end of August. The usurpers are already crowing victory, because although only a simple majority was required to move to trial, more than the two-thirds of the Senators required to remove her from office voted yesterday to proceed to the trial.
In an April 4, 2016 memorandum on “How To Defeat the Attempted Bankers’ Coup d’État against Brazil’s Rousseff Government,” circulated in Portuguese, English and Spanish, EIRidentified the impeachment offensive as the opening of a “color revolution” against the “B” in the BRICS, modelled on the British Monarchy’s 1990s “Mani Pulite” (“Clean Hands”) operation against Italy. “This is not a war that can be won inside Brazil. But it can be won,” EIR warned; “it can only be defeated by understanding the international strategic issues at stake, and defeating that policy internationally,” and implementing LaRouche’s Four Laws.
That lesson has yet to be learned by all but a few Brazilian patriots. The spectacle of the Aug. 9 debate proved again that the insistence on fighting the coup through internal maneuvers and answering charges point-for-point, guarantees defeat.
Rousseff is charged with four counts of violating the balanced budget Fiscal Responsibility Law. But, the three-man independent expert witness panel which reviewed the charges submitted its conclusions a month ago that there was no proof that the President was responsible for three of the violations charged, and that the fourth did not affect the budget at all.
No matter. The lawyer presenting the case for impeachment yesterday, Miguel Reale Junior, urged the Senators to ratify the “wonderful” case for impeachment prepared by Sen. Antonio Anastasia, of the Senate Impeachment Committee. He did not mention that three days earlier, Anastasia himself had been named as taking bribes in the Lava Jato anti-corruption case—along with “acting” President Michel Temer, Temer’s Foreign Minister and Chief of Staff. Reale argued that: President Rousseff really should have been charged under Lava Jato; she does not deserve to govern Brazil anymore; and she had to be responsible for the alleged budget law violations—the actual charges upon which she is being impeached—because she is a “dominating” personality whose government “spent, spent and spent” in obscurity!
