General

As Xinhua notes today, “China is making steady progress from a follower to a leader in transport technology“ referencing a new white paper released in Beijing today. China possesses self-developed core technologies, and has made major breakthroughs in transport infrastructure and equipment, according to the white paper titled “Sustainable Development of Transport in China”. The following are some world-leading mega-projects and technologies listed by the white paper:

-— China leads the world in technology for railways at high altitudes and in extremely low temperatures, and for high-speed and heavy-haul railways.

-— It has solved the most challenging technical problems confronting highway construction in difficult geological conditions such as plateau permafrost, expansive soil, and desert. It also leads in core technologies for building deep-water offshore ports, improving massive estuary and long waterways, and building large airports.

-— By the end of 2019, the total length of high-speed railway lines across the country exceeded 35,000 km, making up more than two thirds of the world’s total.

-— The Beijing-Guangzhou High-speed Railway, the longest high-speed rail line in the world, has been completed. The Harbin-Dalian High-speed Railway, the world’s first high-speed rail line operating at low temperatures in winter is open to traffic. The Datong-Qinhuangdao Heavy-haul Railway ranks top in the world in terms of annual transport volume.

-— China leads the world in the total length and number of highway bridges and tunnels in service and under construction. It has seven of the ten longest cable-stayed bridges, six of the ten longest suspension bridges, six of the ten longest cross-sea bridges, and eight of the ten highest bridges in the world.

-— The Fuxing electric multiple units trains have been running at 350 km/h – the highest operating speed in the world – on the Beijing-Shanghai Highspeed Rail, the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Rail and the Beijing-Zhangjiakou High-speed Rail.

-— China became the first in the world to realize autopilot on trains running at a speed of 350 km/h. 

Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, has written an open letter to President Trump asking him to grant a pardon to Julian Assange.

His letter reads:

“Mr. President, Today, I respectfully request that you pardon Mr. Julian Assange. Mr. Assange has been arbitrarily deprived of his liberty for the past ten years. This is a high price to pay for the courage to publish true information about government misconduct throughout the world. I visited Mr. Assange in Belmarsh High Security Prison in London, with two independent medical doctors, and I can attest to the fact that his health has seriously deteriorated, to the point where his life is now in danger. Critically, Mr. Assange suffers from a documented respiratory condition which renders him extremely vulnerable to the Covid-19 pandemic that has recently broken out in the prison where he is being held. I ask you to pardon Mr. Assange, because he is not, and has never been, an enemy of the American people. His organization, WikiLeaks, fights secrecy and corruption throughout the world and, therefore, acts in the public interest both of the American people and of humanity as a whole.

“I ask because Mr. Assange has never published false information. The cause for any reputational harm that may have resulted from his publications is not to be found in any misconduct on his part, but in the very misconduct which he exposed.

“I ask because Mr. Assange has not hacked or stolen any of the information he published. He has obtained it from authentic documents and sources in the same way as any other serious and independent investigative journalists conduct their work. While we may personally agree or disagree with their publications, they clearly cannot be regarded as crimes.

“I ask because prosecuting Mr. Assange for publishing true information about serious official misconduct, whether in America or elsewhere, would amount to `shooting the messenger’ rather than correcting the problem he exposed. This would be incompatible with the core values of justice, rule of law and press freedom, as reflected in the American Constitution and international human rights instruments ratified by the United States.

“I ask because you have vowed, Mr. President, to pursue an agenda of fighting government corruption and misconduct; and because allowing the prosecution of Mr. Assange to continue would mean that, under your legacy, telling the truth about such corruption and misconduct has become a crime.

“In pardoning Mr Assange, Mr. President, you would send a clear message of justice, truth and humanity to the American people and to the world.

“You would rehabilitate a courageous man who has suffered injustice, persecution and humiliation for more than a decade, simply for telling the truth.

“Last but not least, you would give back to Mr. Assange’s two young sons the loving father they need and look up to. You would also reassure these children, and through them all children of the world, that there is nothing wrong with telling the truth, but that it is the right thing to do; that it is honourable to fight for justice and, indeed, that these are the values America and the world stand for.”

“For these reasons, I respectfully appeal to you to pardon Julian Assange. Whatever our personal views and sympathies may be, I believe that, after a decade of persecution, this man’s unjust suffering must end now. Please, use your power of pardon to right the wrongs inflicted on Julian Assange, to end his unjust ordeal and reunite him with his family!

“I respectfully thank you for considering this appeal with foresight, generosity and compassion. Please accept, Mr. President, the assurances of my highest consideration.”

Register for Sept. 5-6 Schiller Institute Conference

This week’s webcast is an abbreviated promotional for this weekend’s Schiller Institute conference. Helga discusses why this conference is necessary, given the strategic tensions and dangers which are growing. In the last days, there have been numerous “near misses” of U.S. aircraft with Russian planes, near collisions at sea with Chinese vessels, and an escalation of war talk coming from U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Esper.

By bringing together representatives of major governments, the conference will be a crucial opportunity to show that dialogue, rather than threats and troop movements, represents the way forward out of the present dangerous paradigm. In the webcast, Helga reviews what will be presented in the four panels and appeals to viewers to join us in the mobilization to succeed in an urgently needed paradigm shift.

Californians for decades have been taught to live in fear of “the big one” – the likelihood of a major earthquake originating in the San Andreas Fault that will cause untold damage and loss of life. It would appear that the state is now experiencing that “big one” – only it is the COVID pandemic, and not an earthquake.

Populous Los Angeles County appears to be the epicenter; as of this weekend all of Southern California and the 12-county San Joaquin Valley to the north had exhausted their regular intensive care unit capacity. Some hospitals are now using “surge” space, although the greater shortage is reportedly of skilled medical personnel, and not space per se.

AP reports that the city of Los Angeles on Saturday had nearly 17,400 people “hospitalized with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infections — more than double the previous peak reached in July — and a state model that uses current data to forecast future trends shows the number could reach an unfathomable 75,000 by mid-January. More than 3,600 confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients were in intensive care units. Some areas of California are `just right at that cusp of getting overrun,’ Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, said during an event organized by the California State University system.”

In total, California’s remaining ICU capacity this weekend stood at just 3%, with the Southern California region already at zero, the San Joaquin Valley region at .7% and the Greater Sacramento region at 11.3%. The Bay Area is now also being hit: “COVID-19 cases are surging in San Francisco and across the country. Hospitals in the Bay Area are close to being overwhelmed,” said Mayor Breed in a news release.

Various forms of triage are already being implemented. In Fresno and three neighboring counties, paramedics are being sent on emergency calls to determine if patients should be taken to the emergency room, or if “they could go to an urgent care facility or wait a few days to talk to their doctors,” local medical authorities report. “I’m not going to sugarcoat this. We are getting crushed,” said Dr. Brad Spellberg, chief medical officer at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. “And it isn’t just COVID patients,” he said. “It’s car accidents and heart attacks and victims of violence. They need a place to go to receive critical care.”

AP reports: “Many hospitals are preparing for the possibility of rationing care. A document recently circulated among doctors at the four hospitals run by Los Angeles County asking them to shift strategy: instead of trying everything to save a life, their goal during the crisis is to save as many patients as possible. `Some compromise of standard of care is unavoidable; it is not that an entity, system, or locale chooses to limit resources, it is that the resources are clearly not available to provide care in a regular manner,’ the document obtained by the Los Angeles Times reads.”

The chief executive of the Corona Regional Medical Center of southeast of Los Angeles, Mark Uffer, stated: “Whatever’s coming, I don’t think any of us are going to be able to manage it. You have a dam that’s about to break, and you’ve got to stop putting water into the dam.”

Speaking to China Daily after his press conference on December 19, Wu Yunhua, the Vice Administrator of the China National Space Agency, also mooted the possibility that the next Chang’e mission could be a sample retrieval from the far side of the Moon. At the press conference he had indicated that Chang’e-6 would land on the south pole of the Moon. Here he said: “But if the Queqiao (relay satellite) still functions real well, we may also consider sending it to the far side to take some samples there. This is because there has never been a mission to return samples from the far side, and if we do so…that will be very meaningful for scientists around the world.” He also added that Chang’e 7 and 8 will be tasked with, among things, exploring the technological feasibility of international cooperation on jointly  building a robotic scientific research outpost on the Moon.

Join us today LIVE at 2pm EST. Today’s meeting will feature Diane Sare, Harley Schlanger and guests from around the country.

The Russian and the Syrian governments have exposed over the past three days the intention of the British-backed terrorists in Syria, together with their “White Helmet” terrorist support apparatus, to stage a fake chemical weapon attack, film the White Helmets “saving” the victims, blast the videos around the world on fake news outlets, and induce President Trump to allow the war party to unleash a missile and air assault on Syria. It worked twice before, although Trump restricted the attacks to minor, limited attacks, with few casualties. However, with ISIS largely defeated by the Syrian army, the British intend to provoke a wider war, both to prevent President Trump from carrying out his intention to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, and to destroy the effort by both Presidents Trump and Putin to bring the U.S. and Russia into a friendly and cooperative relationship. In the eyes of the British Empire, the Helsinki Summit between Trump and Putin marked a deadly threat to the Empire itself.

Let there be no doubt: The British would vastly prefer a thermonuclear showdown, or even a thermonuclear war, between the United States and Russia, rather than see the imperial division of the world between East and West torn down. The power of the City of London and its Wall Street subsidiary depends absolutely on that division.

The first fake chemical attack in Syria took place while Trump was meeting with Xi Jinping in Florida in April 2017, aimed at undermining Trump’s personal cooperation with China’s leader. The second attack came in April of this year, based on a White Helmet video which was proven by multiple witnesses, and even the testimony of the supposed “victims” themselves, to have been completely staged by the White Helmets.

The difference now is that the Russians and the Syrians have the evidence ahead of the fake chemical weapons attack, and have made it public, calling on the world to stop it. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Igor Konashenkov told the press on Aug. 25: “To carry out the alleged `chemical attack’ in the city of Jisr al-Shugur in the province of Idlib, militants from the Tahrir al-Sham [Jabhat al Nusra in Syria]…, had delivered eight tankers with chlorine to a village a few kilometers from Jisr al-Shugur. This provocation, with the active participation of the British special services will serve as another pretext for the U.S., U.K., and France to conduct a missile strike on the Syrian government and economic facilities.” He identified both the White Helmets and the Olive Group, a 5,000-strong British mercenary organization based in Abu Dhabi, as active participants in preparing the provocation.

When the British claimed that Assad was using chemical weapons in 2013, without evidence, President Obama ordered preparation for a full-scale military assault on Syria. Only the mass mobilization of the citizenry forced Obama to back down, after an outcry against yet another illegal and genocidal war against a Southwest Asian country which was no threat the West, and which in fact was staunchly anti-terrorist.

A similar mobilization today can and must prevent the current British plan for war. The fact that President Trump, unlike Obama, is opposed to regime change, wants to pull out of Syria as soon as ISIS is fully eliminated, and wants the U.S. and Russia to collaborate in this and other tasks, means that exposing this British provocation will also greatly contribute to stopping the British coup attempt against Trump through the Mueller Russiagate witch hunt.

In fact, President Trump was elected precisely because he is intent on breaking the “Special Relationship” with the British, a relationship which has turned the U.S. into a post-industrial junk heap, with a drugged up and demoralized population and a policy of permanent warfare. The LaRouche movement knows what is needed to make Trump a great President and to truly make America great again: He must be liberated from the coup attempt, freeing him to join with Russia and China and India in a New Bretton Woods agreement, to put the Western financial system through bankruptcy proceedings and restore the industrial economies of the West, in league with the New Silk Road development of the entire world. Without the United States taking that dramatic step, there is no possibility of the world avoiding disaster, and no possibility of the United States taking that step if Trump is brought down by the war party.

The New Paradigm is within our grasp, if we rise to the moment as a human race, to end geopolitics and Empire from the face of the Earth.

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The possibility that President Donald Trump may pardon Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, now being slowly killed in a London prison, especially in the aftermath of the recent resignation of Attorney General William Barr, has raised a tantalizing question. Will the Russiagate “computer hack that never was” so central to the present Assange incarceration and torture finally be brought to light if he is released from prison? Will the criminal conspiracy against the US Presidency that involved “Five Eyes” intelligence agencies, and City of London/Wall Street financial interests, be exposed, through the declassification and release of all documents essential to revealing the Russiagate hoax? Will these documents include relevant portions of the tens of thousands of pages Ty Clevenger has learned the FBI has just acknowledged to exist in their files that are relevant to his request in a FOIA lawsuit regarding information on Seth Rich? Will we perhaps finally see the release of these and other documents through the firings and/or resignations of CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Christopher Wray, following William Barr? 

Swift, unexpected and unorthodox action by the President could now be the only way to reveal the true nature, and reverse the present outcome of the 2020 Presidential election. By allowing justice, through such actions, to provide a platform for Snowden, an ailing Assange, National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney and others, to reveal how the surveillance state has nearly mortally wounded the American electoral process, just as it has manipulated and fixed elections throughout the planet for decades—regardless of where the chips may fall—Donald Trump could yet be inaugurated President in January 2021. If the truth of the campaigns of 2016 and 2020 were finally told to the American people, whoever does that will have earned their undying support. And that truthful explanation will instantly reveal the bloody face of the Obama-Bush Administrations joined at the hip through their advocacy of war as the primary tool of diplomacy.

British Intelligence, Not Russia Or China, Is The “Foreign Actor”

Have you noticed that, if one names China or Russia, many are quick to simply accept the idea of foreign intervention in the US elections, but whenever the well-documented involvement of British intelligence in interfering in the United States elections and presidency in the past five years is brought up, “conspiracy theory” is the term used to reject that analysis? The names Christopher Steele, Robert Hannigan, Sir Richard Dearlove, American Stefan Halper, and Sir Kim Darroch—all of them attached directly to GCHQ, MI6, or the British Foreign Service—are only those operatives so far known to have directly fomented either the “Russia, Russia, Russia” story, or the “China, China, China” story. There may be many more. 

Yet “it’s really hard for me to see how Great Britain is involved “ is still used as an excuse by most {not} to face what has actually been going on. Ignoring the truth however, becomes impossible when looking at the case of Julian Assange. Assange is being killed before our eyes in a British prison in order that the Russia fiction be preserved. How is this done? On February 20 earlier this year, the Guardian newspaper printed the headline: “Donald Trump ‘offered Julian Assange a pardon if he denied Russia link to hack.’” Most media would be instantaneously discredited as hoaxsters, and reluctantly ever believed again, once Assange, along with knowledgeable others, were allowed to speak publicly about Russiagate. The cui bono—who benefits—from Assange’s silence, is the conspirators that originated, carried out, and hid the plot against the American Presidency—British, American and otherwise. As journalist Viktor Dedaj stated at the December 12 Schiller Institute panel, “Hang Together or Hang Separately: Free and Sovereign Republics, or Digital Dictatorship”:

“When Julian Assange was finally removed from the Embassy in violation of international law and even the Ecuadorian constitution, it only took a quarter of an hour for the British judge, first to insult him and then to sentence him to 50 weeks in prison for violating what? His ‘conditions of probation’….But he (was) not just…sentenced to 50 weeks, but to 50 weeks in a high security prison. We will see that this is the only case to my knowledge in Great Britain, that a journalist, accused of nothing, in preventive detention, is locked up in a high security prison…. We saw a trial that almost took place behind closed doors, refusing by name the presence of about 50 NGOs, where 90 journalists had been accredited…”

Edward Snowden, it should be remembered, was aided in 2013 by Julian Assange in his successful escape from Hong Kong. Snowden was then marooned in Moscow when his passport was revoked, thus making it impossible for him to travel further. National Security Agency whistleblower Kirk Wiebe has observed that, far from being a traitor, as many have asserted, Snowden may have been forced to act in an illegal way in order to preserve his sworn oath to the Constitution of the United States. His actions occurred several years after Wiebe, along with William Binney and Ed Loomis, and later joined by House Intelligence Committee staffer Diane Roark, had used “the approved channels and procedures” to report wrongdoing following their resignations from the NSA in 2001, only to be raided at gunpoint by the FBI and nearly railroaded and sent to prison by the Department of Justice in 2007. President Trump’s recent indication that he might look to pardon Snowden, after Trump had years earlier even stated that Snowden deserved death, has deeply worried intelligence insiders, Republican and Democrat. These “deep staters” above all else want to draw attention away from the ugly truth. The systemic overthrow of governments, including through the manipulation and fixing of elections by members of the “Five Eyes” secret government arrangement, is standard operating procedure for what is called in the American intelligence world “Project Democracy,” first widely revealed to the American public by Lyndon LaRouche and Executive Intelligence Review in the 1987 Report “Project Democracy: The Parallel Government Behind the Iran-Contra Affair.”

How Project Democracy’s Campaign Against Lyndon LaRouche Destroyed American Elections

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller

The past is prologue. To understand how it came to pass that American intelligence agencies, acting in collusion with a British foreign power that no one cares to name, committed fraud against both the 2020 and 2016 elections, it is necessary to understand the use of Executive Order 12333 and other 1980s Presidential directives to reorganize and centralize many intelligence functions into the Office of the Vice President. (To understand the implications of what this means, think “Dick Cheney.”) E.O. 12333 and various other orders hastened the privatization of military and intelligence functions. Companies, sometimes referred to as quasi non-governmental organizations (“quangos”), infested daily American life—and then came the internet, developed originally for military use and afterwards illegally deployed for universal surveillance through criminal applications of programs originally designed to defend the United States, such as Bill Binney’s ThinThread program. 

Studying the case of Lyndon LaRouche, and his 1984–1989 legal lynching, is the single most efficient means by which today’s American electorate can begin to understand the true nature of the grand crime against the Presidency presently being committed, a crime that will require, for its correction, LaRouche’s exoneration, as well as justice for Assange and Snowden. 

In fact, whether Julian Assange is successfully kept alive and released from prison in the next weeks, or whether Edward Snowden is soon allowed to return home and assist in the process of cleaning out the “secret government” that has run the United States, is intimately tied to whether Lyndon LaRouche, economist, statesman, and Presidential candidate, is finally exonerated. Though LaRouche died on February 12 2019, his exoneration now plays an even greater role in rectifying the destruction of the American Presidential system that has gone on for over a half-century. The October 6, 1986 attempted assassination of LaRouche, and his subsequent prosecution, conviction and imprisonment, was not an attack on a “maverick political extremist,” as it was portrayed by literally thousands of printed and electronic media stories at the time. It was, because of LaRouche’s use of his Presidential campaigns to change the direction of the policies of the Reagan and other presidencies, that destroying him meant, in reality, a violent, near lethal assault on the American Presidential system. It was the same Presidential system that came under violent attack with the November 22, 1963 murder of JFK, the April-June 1968 double assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and the March 1981 near-assassination of Ronald Reagan.

Lyndon LaRouche(1922–2019), economist and statesman, was for five decades the most controversial figure in American politics. He became a world-class threat through his United States Presidential campaigns. His 1970s denunciation of the genocidal looting policies and predatory lending practices of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Anglo-American financial establishment in general, and his successful organizing of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative in 1982-83, earned him the undying enmity of the “baby doomers” that have now huddled around the trillions-dollar financial scam known as the “Green New Deal.” LaRouche had to be taken out, or at least, down. That attack was coordinated through the privatized intelligence route , including the April 1983 establishment of a “Get LaRouche Task Force” headed up by financier John Train of New York, and involving multiple intelligence agencies. Individuals such as London’s favorite Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, also played a central role in initiating fraudulent legal actions that aimed to stop him. LaRouche’s enemies, including Robert Mueller, played a role in the attempt to shut down LaRouche’s Presidential campaigns in both 1984 and 1988. 

It is virtually impossible for Americans to understand what is now unfolding around the Presidential election without knowing why LaRouche posed such a threat, and what was done to silence him. LaRouche’s enemies are the Malthusians—those who want to see the planet’s population reduced by at least half in the next 30 years—the bankers’ environmental movement. Poor people are very bad for the environment, they say. And the most prominent of environmentalists are now, often, also the world’s biggest bankers. Take, for example, the newly-formed Guardians for Inclusive Capitalism, founded by Lynn Forester de Rothschild, whose leaders claim to represent more than $10.5 trillion in assets under management. Is this a “grassroots environmental movement?” Is this even an “astroturf movement? “ Their plan is to de-carbonize the planet by lessening the number of people presently on it by four, five, or six billion. Famine, pestilence, disease, and war—the “Four Horsemen”—are their preferred way of doing it. And those are the policies that are the immediate future under the new, friendly, enlightened cyber-dictatorship. 

Only a vigorous campaign on behalf of justice in all forms—electoral justice, economic justice, defense of the right to know—can save the United States, the trans-Atlantic world, or the world as a whole. These next days before us give us a chance to not merely demand, but secure that justice. Action in these three cases—pardons in the cases of Assange and Snowden, and exoneration for Lyndon LaRouche—are the direct path to securing justice for all citizens throughout the world, and in every country. They are the path to justice for the President of the United States as well. Fiat Justitia ruat caelum —“let justice be done, though the heavens fall.” Now, in these next days, justice given, is justice gained.

Nov. 12 – The proposal to build a Eurasia Canal for ships to traverse between the Caspian and Black Seas was presented to the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Shortsea Shipowners Association in Piraeus, Greece, on Nov. 8. The idea was depicted by Dean Andromidas, representative of the Schiller Institute and the EIR Strategic Alert, who spoke for 20 minutes and then fielded questions from board members.

The Eurasia Canal was first proposed by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2007. The project calls for a 750-km cement-lined canal across the Manych Depression in the Russian Caucasus. It would have five locks and accommodate ships of the Handymax class of up to 35,000 DWT, thus for the first time introducing ships of this class to the Caspian Sea.

According to studies by the Chinese Sinohydro company, a potential of 120 million tons of cargo could pass through the canal, including hydrocarbons from the Caspian Sea region, which accounts for 6-10% of the world’s oil reserves. It would also carry other bulk cargo, including grain and mineral resources. The container traffic from China could amount to as much as 24-30 million tons. This compares with the 101 km Volga-Don Canal, which has a capacity of only 15 million tons, accommodating ships no larger than 5,000 DWT.

By opening up all of Central Asia to maritime shipping, the Eurasia Canal would create a new economic development corridor stretching from the port of Lianyungang in China on the Yellow Sea, through Urumqi in China’s westernmost Xinjiang province, to the port of Aktau on the Caspian in Kazakhstan, through to the Black Sea and into the Aegean Sea, right on Greece’s maritime doorstep. This is a region comprising more than 11 countries and more than 1 billion people. The canal would be an important contribution to the ongoing Belt and Road Initiative composed of the Economic Silk Road Belt and Maritime New Silk Road integrating Eurasia and Africa.

Questions posed by the participants demonstrated a lively interest in the project. Many of them, who were already active in the shipping sector on the Caspian and also the Danube, quickly grasped the potential for such a channel. While one might have expected concerns about the costs of such a project, none were raised. One participant said, the real issue is the will among the concerned nations to build the project. As for financing, the participant pointed to China and how it is able to mobilize financing for major projects after it had made the decision to go ahead.