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Webcast 2011.12.11: Live Address to NJ Townhall Meeting (Archived)

Video, 1 hour, 44 minutes

On Sunday, December 11th, at 4:30pm EST, Lyndon LaRouche spoke to an audience gathered at a public LaRouche PAC Symposium in New Jersey. The subject of the Symposium was "Mankind in the Galaxy: Will You Permit the Extinction of the Human Species?", of which Lyndon LaRouche's presentation was the final part.

 

 

 

 

 

Drive for European Fascism

December 9th, 2011 • 12:04 PM

As we are heading towards "the" European Council summit of Dec. 8th-9th in Brussels, it is clear that most of the disagreements remain and that what clearly is lacking is money for any more bailout facilities. Why gargle, summit after summit, about creating the ESM (European Stability Mechanism), which is to replace the EFSF, if Europe is incapable of finding the EU500 billion that is supposed to go in it?        

France and Germany have sent a letter to Van Rompuy as President of the European Council, outlining the proposals that will be submitted to the 27 EU member-states during this summit. Van Rompuy issued his own statement with an approach by steps to a deeper reform of the EMU than that proposed by Germany and France. The reality of those proposals is that there is nothing new, except more supranational dictatorial measures and more austerity policies.        

As the European leaders continue to repeat ESM, EFSF, ECB, IMF, like a mantra, the more pragmatic are proceeding with contingency plans for the worst-case scenario with countries either pulling out of the euro, or the Eurozone imploding altogether.        

The Franco-German proposals:        

There are five proposals submitted by France and Germany to van Rompuy, as president of the Council "to reinforce the architecture of the European Economic and Monetary Union" (EMU). They include automatic financial sanctions, the adoption of the "golden rule" to control deficits, hyperinflationary measures to pursue the bailout via the ESM, and reinforced integration of the Eurozone. They do not include a fiscal union.        

1) Automatic sanctions would be applied to those Eurozone members violating the old Maastricht criteria: a deficit of 3% of the GDP and 60% indebtedness, unless a qualified majority of Eurozone members rejects them. That country would then sign a "European partnership for reform" with the EU until compliance were reached, and the EU would have the right to adopt more and more intrusive measures until the problem were purportedly resolved.        

2) A "golden rule" prohibiting deficits above the specified thresholds should be adopted into law by each Eurozone state, "preferably at the constitutional level or equivalent." The EU Commission or a member state would be able, via the European Court of Justice, to verify that another nation had adopted these regulations within its legal code.      

3) Devaluation applied to Greek bonds "was singular and exceptional," says this letter. The private sector will only be called upon to contribute on a case-by-case basis, following IMF rules so as not to discourage investors.        

4) Clearly a fiscal union as such is not part of the deal, even though they try to go in that direction. They call for more summits, more coordination, and for consideration by the different governments that the "impact of economic and budgetary policies of the euro zone must be considered as a question of common interest," but they stress, "while fully respecting national responsibility" [emphasis added].  Proposed areas of coordination would be "financial regulation," "labor market," "synchronization of taxes on companies," tax of financial transactions or policies for supporting growth.        

5) They propose that implementation of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM)) should be moved up to 2012 from mid-2013. Decisions on what country could be bailed out would be made by a superqualified majority, defined as representing 85% of the capital subscribed to the ECB, which means that Italy, France and Germany effectively have a veto right.        

Discussion is expected to determine the specifics, but already one should note that: 1) Austria stated that it will not adopt the so-called "golden rule"; 2) in France, the Socialist Party is totally against any new treaty, or any golden rule, since this is nothing but a repeat of the Maastricht Criteria which are already in the treaties; 3) David Cameron, under pressure from his sovereignist wing, is threatening not to join a new treaty unless Britain is accorded the right to 1) reject taxes on financial transactions, and 2) to reject the Basel criteria for banks.        

Just one big happy family, with perfidious albatross around its neck.

 

 

 

Lavrov Urges Arab League To Pursue Peace Plan in Syria

December 8th, 2011 • 1:02 AM

After attending a meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that the Arab League peace plan for Syria needs time to work in the same way that a similar program for Yemen eventually bore fruit.

"A few months were spent by all external players to convince the warring parties [in Yemen] to agree and sign a corresponding peace plan," Lavrov told reporters on the sidelines. "The same kind of patience, the same kind of responsibility need to be exercised in relation to the realization of the plan of the Arab League in Syria," he added.

Lavrov said Russia did not want the Arab League initiative to become an ultimatum or an excuse for outside interference. On the other hand, the observers to be sent to Syria could include non-Arabs, if it suited Damascus, he said. "Russia, in particular, could delegate its own representatives to such a group, if the Syrian authorities were interested," he said.

Lavrov was supported by Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci, who told lawmakers in Paris that Syria was in a "pre-civil-war situation." "Today we are in a situation where we are putting pressure on the Syrian government and, on the other hand, talking to the opposition to create the conditions for dialogue," he said.

Earlier, the Foreign Minister of Qatar, the Gulf country that supplied arms, along with the French, to the Libyan rebels defying the arms embargo, and which is now planning to do the same for their colonial masters, had threatened his Algerian counterpart, saying, "Stop defending Syria; because, when your turn comes, you may need us!" That threat, reported by the Arab and Algerian press on Nov. 16, was issued to the Algerian Foreign Minister during an animated argument between the two top diplomats when the Arab League was deliberating in Cairo last month on how best to contain the dire situation in Syria.

 

 

 

Playing with Fire: Destabilizing Russia

December 7th, 2011 • 8:59 AM

The two days after Russia's parliamentary elections of December 4 have seen the Project Democracy networks of George Soros, Mikhail Gorbachov, and other London-linked enthusiasts of "regime change" take aim at Russia, and at the prospective return of Vladimir Putin to its Presidency, in particular. Western officials piling on in the attacks against Russia's Putin-Medvedev tandem include British Foreign Minister William Hague, who proclaimed his "serious concerns" after an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) report charged the United Russia party with ballot box-stuffing; U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who toed the "serious concerns" line on behalf of the Obama Administration, adding that "Russian voters deserve a full investigation of all credible reports of electoral fraud and manipulation, and we hope in particular that the Russian authorities will take action"; and Sen. John McCain, who issued a Twitter message addressed to Putin: "Dear Vlad, The Arab Spring is coming to a neighborhood near you."

Ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachov went on the liberal radio station Echo of Moscow to call for "changes in the Russian political system."

In the elections to the State Duma, the United Russia slate headed by current President Dmitri Medvedev was credited with just under 50% of the vote, retaining a simple majority of 238 seats in the 450-member parliament — a loss of 70-some seats. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation, with almost 20%, doubled its representation to 92 seats. The party led by former Federation Council head Sergei Mironov, A Just Russia, got 13% (64 seats) and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia received 11% (56 seats).

The people being described in the Western media as "the opposition" are not from those parties. The extra-parliamentary Solidarity movement took to the streets on Monday to charge United Russia with vote fraud. Several thousand people showed up for a demo, for which they had a permit for 500 people. The crowd was whipped up by Alexei Navalny, a lawyer who has become famous as an online crusader against corruption, who shouted, "Putin is a thief," and led chants of "Russia without Putin," and "We shall not forgive!" At a certain point, according to Russian press accounts and amateur video clips posted online, Ilya Yashin of Solidarity called on the crowd to march on the headquarters of the Central Electoral Commission, at which point they moved into areas for which they did not have a permit, and were stopped by OMON special police forces. Some 200 to 300 people were arrested, including Yashin and Navalny.

Navalny has become an Internet celebrity over the past year, since launching exposes of the siphoning of millions of dollars and rubles out of major government-funded projects such as the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline. He has also been heavily cultivated in the West: in 2010 he was a fellow in the Yale World Fellows Program, a project created by Yale University President Richard C. Levin with input from former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo (who has his own long history of collaboration with Soros in the "Drugs and Democracy" pro-dope legalization project), to "create a global network of emerging leaders." The participants are trained by the likes of UN Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown (famous for creating the Saakashvili project, with Soros, in Georgia), Aryeh Neier, who heads Soros's Open Society Institute, and Tom Scholar, the UK Executive Director at the World Bank and IMF.

Upon Navalny's return to Russia, he was featured in a highly unrepresentative mock Moscow mayoral election, run online by the financial daily Kommersant. Navalny "won", with 45% of the 67,000 votes cast. Another paper, Vedomosti (co-owned by the Financial Times of London), named Navalny "Person of the Year" in 2009. He was the subject of an April 2011 puff piece in The New Yorker on "one man's cyber-crusade against Russian corruption." He famously dubbed United Russia "the Party of Crooks and Thieves." In 2005, he and Maria Gaidar, daughter of the architect of the disastrous neoliberal 1990s economic policies, formed a group with the neurolinguistic programming-style name of "Da!" ("Yes!"), but he has also linked up with the anti-immigrant Russian March movement.

Today the liberal and Gorbachov-linked media were in ecstasy over the arrest and 15-day detention of Yashin and Navalny. Alexei Venediktov, the owner and editor of Echo of Moscow radio, proclaimed that the arrest of Navalny would prove to be Putin's fatal mistake. Liberal journalist Yulia Latynina wrote in the Moscow Times that Dec. 4 will have been Putin's last election; that he will not be elected President in March. Liberal politician Boris Nemtsov attempted to visit Navalny and Yashin in prison. Amnesty International declared them "prisoners of conscience," while Nicola Duckworth, AI's Director for Europe and Central Asia, declared that "these shameful arrests once again demonstrate the inability of the Russian government to respect the rights of its citizens to freedom of expression and assembly."

Medvedev held a nationally televised meeting with Vladimir Churov, head of the Central Electoral Commission, who reported to him that some international observers had complained that not enough parties were on the ballot in the election. Medvedev replied brusquely that Russia's political system is its own affair, and "not their business." Medvedev said he had watched video clips of the Monday demonstrations, which he said consisted mostly of "incomprehensible" shouting.

Putin, meanwhile, met Tuesday with United Russia activists who represent him, as UR leader, in communications with the population in the regions. He said that UR had achieved a "stable majority." "Yes, there were losses, as is inevitable for any political force, especially one that has assumed the burden of responsibility for the situation in the country for more than just one year. "You and I can see, and we know what is happening in countries whose economic and social situations seemed more stable: millions of people are in the streets." "Yet," he continued, "Russia has raised wages and pensions." He pledged a renewed and upgraded fight against corruption.