Samarbejd med Rusland for
at mestre atomkernen,
og rejs ud i rummet!
LaRouchePAC Internationale
Webcast, 16. december, 2016

Medierne svirrer med historier om, at den russiske præsident Vladimir Putin hackede de amerikanske valg. Vi får kommentarer fra Lyndon LaRouche om hele denne larm, og vi hører fra et medlem af Efterretnings-veteraner for Sund Fornuft (VIPS), tidligere senator fra Alaska, Mike Gravel, om disse beskyldninger, samt om, hvad vore relationer med Rusland og Kina bør være. Dernæst bevæger vi os ud i rummet, med overvejelser over behovet for fælles, internationalt samarbejde om forsvar af Jorden mod sådanne kosmiske trusler som vildfarne asteroider og kometer, samt diskuterer den moralske forpligtelse over for fremskridt og videnskabelig opdagelse, der i sig har potentialet til at forene nationer på basis af et nyt grundlag for internationale relationer mod fælles, menneskelige mål!     

Engelsk udskrift:

We Need To Develop a Platform of Economic Activity that Makes Mankind an Active Force in the Solar System!

LaRouche PAC Friday Webcast, December 16, 2016

        JASON ROSS:  Hi there!  It's December 16, 2016, and you're
joining us for our Friday LaRouche PAC webcast.  We're recording
today at 3:30 in the afternoon.  My name is Jason Ross; I'll be
the host today.  I'm joined in the studio by Ben Deniston and via
Google Hang-outs by Kesha Rogers, member of the LaRouche PAC
Policy Committee.
        So, the world has presently undergone a tumultuous
sea-change in its orientation; away from the trans-Atlantic world
of wars, of economic stagnation.  We've seen this recently in
such votes as the Brexit vote in England, which was a repudiation
of that orientation; we've seen it in the election of Donald
Trump in the United States, which certainly a repudiation of what
Obama had represented and what Hillary was seen as being sure to
continue.  Instead, we're seeing something much better come about
in potential, which is the war avoidance strategy from Russia and
the economic cooperation being put forward by China through the
Belt and Road initiative; which is the Chinese policy initiative
which has come as a result of decades of organizing by Lyndon and
Helga LaRouche and their associates for a policy which they had
called the Eurasian Land-Bridge and which has now become the New
Silk Road, and as China calls it, the Belt and Road initiative
for cooperation on economic projects internationally.
        This isn't something that the trans-Atlantic financial and
military power is taking lying down.  Instead, the use of war, of
murder, of destabilization to prevent such cooperation has been
put into place; as we've seen with the disastrous military policy
of Obama, for example, and of George Bush before him.  Over the
past few weeks, this has taken a turn with an increasing drumbeat
of stories about Russia hacking the US election; of stories
coming out, not backed by hard evidence, but by hearsay and by
appealing to the words of authorities that we can presumably
trust, that Vladimir Putin threw the election to Donald Trump by
hacking the DNC and the emails of John Podesta, and I suppose
controlling the thoughts of everybody who voted for Donald Trump.
This has been going on since the summer; this is when the DNC
first announced that its email system had been compromised.  At
that time, in discussions around this, the Secretary General of
NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said "A severe cyber-attack may be
classified as a case for the alliance — NATO.  Then NATO can and
must react.  How?  That will depend on the severity of the
attack."  So, putting it on the table that cyber-attacks can be
met with military responses by NATO.  In October, the famous
James Clapper, who said that the US was not wittingly collecting
material on millions of Americans when asked by Senator Wyden,
Clapper — along with the head of Homeland Security — said in
October that "we believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of
these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could
have authorized these activities."
        Over the past weeks, we've seen front-page articles in the
{New York Times}, the {Washington Post}; for example, last Friday
the {Washington Post} without naming any sources or pointing to
any specific facts, wrote that "The CIA has concluded, in a
secret assessment, that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to
help Donald Trump win the Presidency, according to officials
briefed on the matter."  So, no named sources.  On Monday, plans
were announced to have the Electors of the Electoral College
briefed by the intelligence agencies on foreign interference in
our elections; basically trying to call into question the
election itself and the laws governing Electors.  Just yesterday,
on NPR's "Morning Edition", President Obama said, "I think there
is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the
integrity of our elections, that we need to take some action.
And we will; at a time and place of our choosing.  Some of it may
be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be.  But Mr. Putin
is well aware of my feelings on this, because I spoke to him
directly about it."  That's what Obama had to say yesterday; he
spoke about it more at his final press conference at the White
House today.
        So, we reached Lyndon LaRouche for comment about this, this
morning; and I'd like to play for you his response:

        LYNDON LAROUCHE [recording]:  Those words in his mouth are,
as far as they're there, that's a threat to murder people; to
murder people of importance.  Because this is the way Obama's
stepfather taught him, and the way that Obama operated in killing
people on Tuesdays during that episode period.  So, the point is,
the threat is murder; and the best thing to do is say, publicly,
that the nations of the planet are now threatened by Obama's plan
for mass killing of people.  And that has to be said; because
that's what that guy has always done, since his stepfather
trained him.  Obama is a killer; and therefore, he's not going to
let things get by peacefully.  Obama will kill, unless somebody
stops him.  That's the reality here.  All the details and so
forth, and things of your back and forth, really don't amount to
much right now.  Many of the people who are leading the effort
of developing the world program don't need to be stirred up.
It's only Obama's crowd that are dangerous; and they will kill.
Therefore, it's important for those who are waiting for their
opportunity but are not going to ask for it; that's where the
problem comes in.  Once Obama, with his crowd, starts killing
people, that's going to be a bloody mess; and that's going to be
the kind of thing that threatens the people of the United States
and others right now.  He's made it clear; the signals are all
there.  Obama is still going for a kill against the people of the
United States and others.

        ROSS:  So, there you have LaRouche's views on the expected
response for Obama to take his usual course of killing to get his
way on things.
        Now, on Monday, the VIPS group — the Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity — released a memo called "Allegations
of Hacking the Election Are Baseless", in which they gave their
reasons for coming to that assessment.  We interviewed a leading
member of the VIPS group, former Senator Mike Gravel — former
Senator from Alaska — to get his take on this; and we can play
that for you now.
        Mike Gravel is one of the signers of a letter that was
released by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity a
couple of days ago in response to the {New York Times} and the
general media tumult around Russia hacking the elections, Russia
denying Hillary Clinton the Presidency; that she deserved as a
gift from God.  So, I'd like to ask Senator Gravel, who is a
former adjutant top-secret control officer for the Communications
Intelligence Service, and a special agent of the
Counterintelligence Corps; and in addition being a former Senator
from Alaska.  Senator Gravel, could you tell our viewers what you
think of this notion that Russia hacked the election and
determined the outcome of our Presidential election here in the
US?

        SEN. MIKE GRAVEL: First off, it's ridiculous! It's
far-fetched ridiculous! We know — and here we can be grateful to
Edward Snowden — that the United States' capability, along with
their partners in Britain, have the capability of vacuuming up
{every single communication in the world}. That means that the
NSA has {all} of Hillary's emails; has {all} of the
communications between the US and Russia. And so for the
government to come out and say via the intelligence community,
that this is all instigated by Russia, is just part of the
demonization that we've seen taking place about Putin and Russia,
as part of a plan in the United States to have regime change in
Russia.  Believe it. We're seeing what's happened in Syria with
regime change, which is hundreds of thousands of people displaced
and killed. And now we know that it was the US that financed the
coup in Kiev, that unseated Ukraine's duly-elected President, who
was favorable to Russia; which, of course, is normal, since they
are neighbors and were essentially one country at one point. And
so we destabilized that, and that was admitted to by the Under
Secretary, Victoria Nuland, who's still there; was there under
Clinton. She admitted that the United States had spent $5 billion
over a 10-year period, to destabilize the government of Ukraine.
We succeeded.
        Then, of course, as a reaction to that, when Russia had to
continue its fresh-water port, which is Sevastopol, which became
under threat, they protected it by annexing — {re}-annexing,
let's put it that way — because it was part of Russia before. It
was given away by Nikita Khruschev several years ago.
        So, in point of fact, we have all the knowledge in the NSA.
Maybe the NSA doesn't talk to the FBI, or doesn't talk to the
CIA. I don't know. We've had this problem in 9/11, with nobody
connecting the dots; and may have that same problem right now.
But there's no question that the United States government does
more activity in the cyber world than {anybody else}. Russia is
probably a distant second. China is a distant second. But there's
nobody that holds a candle to what we're capable of doing.
        So, for our government to turn around — or {elements}
within our government let's put it that way — to turn around and
say that the Democratic Party was hacked and these hacks were
given to WikiLeaks who then released them; well, it seems odd
that the American government would have to be partners of
WikiLeaks to let this stuff out. What seems more likely, is that
somebody within the government, whether rogue or intent, saw this
as an ability to try and embarrass Russia; embarrass Putin, and
to save face for Hillary, who was promptly losing the election
with her skullduggery.
        As a result of this, we now see the {New York Times} — and
this should not surprise us — the {New York Times} and the
{Washington Post}, the two major national newspapers of note,
have done a lot of disinformation over the years, and I think
this is just one more instance of that disinformation coming out
of the {New York Times}. Keep in mind it's the {New York Times}
that ginned up the war to invade Iraq. You can take your credits
from there, as to what they're capable of doing when they put
their mind to it.
        So, that's essentially what I think is the case. Here too,
we have enough people with skills and knowledge, particularly
with our group, the former intelligence officers in the
government, very senior intelligence officers — because none of
us are spring chickens — to be able to question what has been
put out, and say that this doesn't seem accurate, and doesn't
make sense.

        ROSS:  So, that interview took place on Wednesday; the same
day the {New York Times} ran a front-page story — "Hacking the
Democrats: How Russia Honed Its Cyber-power and Trained It on an
American Election".  So, it's half the front page; four full
pages inside.  That same day, Sam Biddle at the {Intercept} put
out what had been amassed as all the public evidence that the
Russian government was behind the hack; pointing out that it's
not enough evidence.  Comparing it to earlier invasions, such as
when people working with the Chinese PLA hacked American
industrial firms, the Department of Justice put out a 56-page
report detailing all the specifics of how it happened; or when
North Korea hacked Sony, the evidence was put forward.  This
time, though, it's just the say-so of intelligence officials.
        All of this might look like it's a bunch of flailing around
to explain the electoral defeat by blaming anybody except for the
terrible candidate that the Democrats had, but it's much more
than this.  You have to remember, this isn't just domestic
theatrics; the case is being made for — as Obama put it — a
revenge attack or some kind of answer being made to Russia in
some way or another.  That is, threatening a nuclear-armed nation
over allegations that have not been backed up with any specific
evidence and frankly, of accusing Russia of things that the US
admits to doing all the time.  So, we asked Senator Gravel, what
was the intent; why the anti-Russian hysteria?  Is this just
about the election?  What's the push for this?  This is what he
had to say:

        SEN. GRAVEL: The intent is to sabotage the potential new
relationship [with Russia]. That's what the intent is. But here
too, I think Trump has his own areas of expertise in this regard.
And the new Secretary of State designate, Rex Tillison, he also
has a great deal of experience with the Russian leadership. And
so, as a result of that, they're going to dictate their own
policy.
        What we see right now, is the last regurgitation of a failed
policy, one that was very dangerous. In demonizing Putin the way
we've done in American media, Western media, and then turning
around and levelling the charge at them that they are trying to
destabilize Western and Eastern Europe, is ridiculous. I know of
no instance — and I would question anybody to quote an instance
— where Russia has threatened anybody in the last decade in
Eastern Europe and Europe proper. He sells them oil and gas; why
would he want to destabilize his customers? It makes no sense at
all. But to the neo-cons, who are intent on trying to protect the
hegemonic position of the United States in the world, {this makes
a lot of good sense for them}. They need to demonize Russia and
Putin, they need to demonize Xi and China, and assert our
military prowess in the world. We have a significant economic
position in the world, and these militarists feel they've got to
shore that position up, with militaristic policies that make no
sense at all.
        What they should be doing, is joining with China in the Silk
Road (One Belt, One Road) to raise the economic level of the
world to a higher level, and that would be the biggest
contribution we could make to the well-being of people around the
world, and to the issue of having world peace. That's what we
should be doing. But that's not what's happening. What's
happening is what we learned from the study of the Thucydides
Trap, where the power which is the global power — which is the
United States — is now facing the problem of an ascending power
like China moving in and surpassing us. Well, our egos may not be
able to take that, but certainly the people of the world could
take it; because it would mean greater economic activity, on the
part of China.
        So, it's all mixed up with this insanity that exists within
the American government, by a group of people called neo-cons.
They start with Cheney. They go from Cheney/Rumsfeld, that crowd,
into the present group of neo-cons. Here you have a person like
John Bolton, who's being considered for the Number Two man at the
State Department. I can't think of a person who's more idiotic,
as a neo-con, than John Bolton. I think Bush is just wantonly
picking people, hither and yon, to satisfy the conservatives.
        I think what they're going to find is when these
conservatives attempt to assert policy positions that are at
variance from Donald Trump, they're going to find they're
short-lived. He'll fire them. He's done that on TV and he's used
to that. "Give me the wrong advice, you're fired." That's what
you're going to see from a President who's going to be tweeting.
He's going to be tweeting his policies to the American people and
the world, all by himself, in his room, with his little computer.

        ROSS:  You know, if you have time for one more question, I'd
like to ask you about China, which you brought up.  One of
Trump's recent appointments was the former governor of Iowa,
which is a state that President Xi Jinping of China has close
ties to, having lived there for years, studying agriculture when
he was a lower-level figure in the government.  You brought up
the One Belt, One Road as a potential for the US to be involved
in.  It's currently something that, under the Obama
administration, the US has been opposing.  The US did not join
the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank; the US urged other
nations not to join it as well.  What would you see as the proper
or the best — what should the US role in the world be?  What
should US relations with China in particular be with regard to
this program?

        SEN. GRAVEL: Well, the U.S. role should, first and
foremost, rests upon economic activity — raising the quality of
life for the people in the United States and for the people in
the world. That's the goal that China has set with respect to its
One Belt, One Road.
        We oppose that because we are refusing to accept the fact
that China is the ascendant power, and that within a couple
decades, will be the Number One economic power in the world; but
not the military power. If you just look at the amount of money
they're spending, they spend about 10% of what we do on our
defense posture. As a result of that, it demonstrates they have
no interest in becoming the military predominant power in the
world. They're ceding that to the United States.
        But that, of course, is not all that attractive, as you saw
in the Pivot to Asia. Thank God that we have a new President,
Duterte, in the Philippines, who is now creating a rapprochement
to China, which is the most enlightened thing they could do.
Their future is not with the United States; their future is as a
player in the economy of South Asia. That's what a rapprochement
with China portends — that both the Philippines will be the
recipient of extensive One Belt, One Road financing to raise the
standard of living in the Philippines, which used to be superior
to many of the other countries in Asia, and is now in the lower
brackets.
        My recommendation is the United States and the new
administration would be
Trump negotiating his "deal." And the deal he can negotiate is
that, yes, the United States will join with China, and will raise
the economic threshold of the world.

        ROSS:  That sounds like an excellent direction for the US.
I was wondering, do you have any other final thoughts you'd like
to leave for our viewers?

        SEN. GRAVEL: No, not at all, except to thank the LaRouche
organization for doing good work in advancing the cause of peace,
and in advancing the cause of economic growth. The only way we
going to bring about world peace is when we raise the standard of
living of the people throughout the world. Again, thank you for
the good work in that regard.

        ROSS:  Senator Mike Gravel, thank you very much.

        SEN. GRAVEL:  You're welcome.

        ROSS:  While keeping up front that assessment from LaRouche
that Obama the murderer is not going to take this transition,
take this shift lying down, and the use of the Russian hacking
business as an opportunity from their perspective to create
conflict, let's switch gears and discuss more about what that
better future ought to be; what our positive policy is.  I'd like
to turn it over now to Ben Deniston.

        BEN DENISTON:  Thanks, Jason.  This should serve as a useful
counterpoint, I think, to everything we were just discussing
here.  In the recent weeks, we've had some discussions with
Lyndon LaRouche about the prospect of bringing the principle of
the SDI — Strategic Defense Initiative, or in its modern form,
the Strategic Defense of Earth; bringing that principle back onto
the table in this potential new strategic environment where,
assuming Obama doesn't get his way and doesn't start
thermonuclear war before the next President even has a chance to
take power, we could see a new alliance emerging between the
United States, Russia, and China.  And setting aside this insane
geopolitical framework of viewing these nations as our
adversaries and doing everything we can to undermine their growth
and development and rise to world prominence.  Mr. LaRouche was
very supportive of this being a time in which the Strategic
Defense of Earth policy can come back as a real pillar of a new
security architecture for the planet; which was also a focus that
Helga Zepp-LaRouche had when we were discussing it with her
earlier in the week as well.  This can be a critical pillar for
how the security, the defense, the military institutions of
nations in this new era, coming together and cooperating on the
new challenges, the common threats and issues that face all
nations.  The reason why I say this is a principle, is because
we're in a new — I would really say for the past couple of
generations — a new historical phase for mankind in this
thermonuclear age.  We've reached the point where if we continue
a geopolitical, imperial policy where a leading power tries to
maintain control at all costs, you're at the point where if that
goes to full-scale war as it has in past periods, past centuries,
you're talking about the annihilation of mankind.  You're talking
about a new phase of mankind, where full-blown warfare now has
the ability to wipe out civilization as we know it.  That's been
an historically new environment that mankind has been dealing
with in the past generations.  Now, we're seeing the potential
for a build-up around that kind of war to be put off the table;
put on the back burner around a new administration.  But what
we're talking about with this Strategic Defense of Earth and in
the context of the broader exploration of space, the joint
development of space which Kesha will have some comments on in a
little bit.  This needs to become a central positive issue that
we rally nations around; it can't just become "Let's not have war
or conflict because it's bad"; but "Let's have a positive,
truthful conception — a real principle — of what are the issues
that face all nations together, that we should be rallying around
in cooperation."
        That was LaRouche's SDI originally; {LaRouche's SDI}, not
necessarily the program that got implemented to some degree.  But
LaRouche's idea of the SDI, which was a joint open cooperative
program with the Soviet Union; sharing technologies and
capabilities, and jointly developing new capabilities to — as
Reagan said — "render the threat of thermonuclear weapons
impotent and obsolete."  We'd actually be working with the
Soviets to do this; and Mr. LaRouche recruited Dr. Edward Teller,
President Reagan around this idea.  These were not hippie,
flower-wielding peaceniks; these are not people that just ran
around saying "No war.  War is bad."  These are pretty serious,
staunch conservative Cold Warriors to a certain degree; but they
recognized the truthful validity of what LaRouche was developing
around his idea of the SDI.  Mankind had reached a point where we
needed positive, collaborative, joint development of these kinds
of capabilities for the common aims of nations.  Mr. LaRouche
came incredibly close, in collaboration with Reagan, Teller, and
others, to really overturning the strategic framework back in the
'80s with that program.
        But that hasn't really gone away.  We've discussed this on
shows in the past, but it's worth just reminding people that in
the '90s, right in the aftermath of the attempt to get the full
SDI program, there was kind of a re-emergence of the same idea
around the defense of Earth.  The recognition at that time — in
the early '90s — that the Earth is actually incredibly
vulnerable to asteroid strikes, comet strikes; and we should
actually be looking at what the heck we can do on this planet to
defend the planet from these kinds of potential disasters.  That
was something that Dr. Edward Teller, in direct collaboration
with other veterans of the SDI and their direct counterparts in
Russia, took up as a major focus in the '90s.  You had a whole
series of conferences and investigations, and proposals really,
for the same type of joint open cooperation between the defense
institutions and related institutions in the United States and
Russia for cooperation around this common threat of the defense
of Earth from not only missiles, but missiles coming from the
Solar System; these asteroids.  Unfortunately, it didn't fully go
through at the time.  We had the continuation of this
geopolitical framework, which has obviously continued through
Bush and now Obama.  But this issue has come back up again.  It
was in 2012 that the Russians refloated the offer, and it was
named the Strategic Defense of Earth in some of the news
coverage.  Direct, explicit opposition to the US and NATO
advancing their missile defense systems towards Russia's borders
into Eastern Europe.  They said, why don't we have a joint
cooperative program for a Strategic Defense of Earth against the
threats of asteroids and related issues?  Now, today, again with
the prospect of a real shift in the United States, assuming we
can contain Obama and he doesn't return to his murderous streak
and orientation as Mr. LaRouche has warned, we could actually see
this principle emerge and become a central pillar of a new
historical era today.
        So, we thought it would be appropriate today, kind of as a
counterpoint, to start to put some of this issue back on the
table.  I wanted to start just by illustrating some of what these
threats are; what we're facing in terms of the threats to the
Earth from these objects in our Solar System.  If we go to the
slideshow, we have a first graphic [Fig. 1] illustrating just the
reality that these impacts happen; and they happen quite frankly
a lot more frequently than people probably tend to realize.  In
the animation, you can see the famous, very well-documented,
surprise Chelyabinsk impact over Russia.  Which we had no warning
about; we did not know was coming.  This frankly very small
asteroid came in and impacted with such a high speed — which is
characteristic of all of these collisions in the Solar System.  A
lot of the energy release is due to the fact that these speeds
are incredibly fast.  When you get an impact of two orbiting
bodies in the Solar System, you tend to get massive energy
releases, explosions.  Here you had a very small object
intersecting the Earth; slamming into the atmosphere and
releasing the energy of a small nuclear explosion as it hit.
This, I think, awakened a lot of the world to the reality that
these kinds of things do happen, and we have no defense.  One, we
didn't even see this one coming; and two, if we had seen it
coming, we have no demonstrated, developed capability to defend
the Earth from these kinds of challenges.  I'd like to point
people to on this graphic additionally, from some data that's
been released in the relatively recent period, we can see in this
map of the world, an illustration of many smaller meteor impacts
into the atmosphere that have occurred just between 1994 and
2013.  The Chelyabinsk impact was the largest in this time range;
these all were smaller than the Chelyabinsk impact, but these
were still large explosions in the upper atmosphere.  You can see
that they've painted the entire Earth over the course of this
time period; just to illustrate the fact that these impacts are
constantly occurring.
        Just to give another sense of defending the Earth from these
asteroids, here is a schematic of the inner Solar System [Fig.
2].  You can see Jupiter's orbit as the farthest orbit out there;
obviously then comes Mars, and Earth's orbit is a little bit
darker than the other orbits.  All of these blue lines —
assuming you have high resolution to see the details of this
visual — this blue haze you might see is actually composed of
over 1400 orbits of asteroids that are specifically classified as
particularly hazardous asteroids.  That is, asteroids whose
orbits cross the Earth's orbit at some point and create the
potential for there to be an intersection where the asteroid is
at the intersection at the same time as the Earth, and you have
an impact, a collision.  You can see here how crowded the inner
Solar System is.
        Fortunately, among these that we know of, none of these are
expected to hit in the next century or any foreseeable timeframe
as far as we know.  This alone looks pretty dense, pretty packed
in the inner Solar System here.  What people should really get
their mind around is, this is a tiny fraction of what we expect
to be out there.
        We can see here, if we take a little bit more complicated
graphic [Fig. 3] and break it down, there are literally hundreds
of thousands to millions of asteroids of the size of the
Chelyabinsk meteor or bigger that we have not discovered.  Based
on our understanding of the distribution of asteroids of
different sizes, we know that they're out there; we just don't
where they are.  We don't know which ones might impact, which
ones might not.  We don't know when the impacts would be.
        Here is a depiction [Fig. 4], you can see the relationship
between, on the horizontal axis in a logarithmic scale, different
sizes of near-Earth asteroids.  On the far right, you can see the
very large ones in the range of kilometers across in diameter,
all the way down to sizes of meters.  On the vertical axis, you
can see the expected estimates of the distribution, the number,
of near-Earth asteroids of those sizes.  You can see for the very
large ones, we believe there are not very many; but as you start
to get to smaller sizes, you get a geometric growth in the number
of near-Earth asteroids of these different sizes.  You can also
see depicted the scale of the damage that would be inflicted on
the Earth if it were to hit over an unlucky location.  The
Chelyabinsk impact being pretty much the smallest size that would
not — kind of representing a lower limit on what doesn't do huge
amounts of damage.  But if it were just a little bigger, that
could have caused really catastrophic effects for Chelyabinsk,
Russia — that region.  In this range, what people sometimes call
a "city-killer" range; the size of object that would release the
energy of a large thermonuclear explosion, we've discovered maybe
1% of the near-Earth asteroids in this size range.
        While NASA has done a good job of finding and discovering a
number of the larger objects which can do damage over a large
fraction of the Earth if not effect the entirety of the Earth;
we've found a good number of those for the asteroids in
particular.  But as you start to go to these smaller sizes, we've
barely scratched the surface.  As dense as you think this
previous graphic is in terms of the number of bodies out there,
there are orders of magnitude more that could do serious damage
that we just don't know about.  Again, the first step is knowing
where they are and when they might hit; the second step is
actually having a defense capability.  We've not really done
anything besides general studies and theoretical investigations
on that front.  So, this is still an open, unanswered challenge.
But this is kind of just the first step in a real defense of the
planet Earth from these types of cosmic challenges.  As people
are probably aware, you also have the issue of comets.  This
really grabbed people's attention in the mid '90s when mankind
sat on the planet Earth, looked to Jupiter, and watched a massive
comet that had broken apart into a series of fragments as you can
see in the upper graphic [Fig. 5] there, collide with Jupiter.
In the moving animation, you see the explosion of one of these
fragments as it impacted Jupiter's surface.  The other bright
object is one of Jupiter's moons; but this is an image in the
infrared where you can see the effects of these energetic types
of activities more clearly.  In the purple image, you can clearly
see the effects of the impact on the surface of Jupiter after the
impact had occurred.  These impacts let marks the size of the
planet Earth on Jupiter's surface.
        So, this was a big wake-up call in the mid '90s.  This was
comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was one of the designations for it.
Before this period, it wasn't widely accepting that we had to
think about these types of impacts.  When this occurred and they
found this stream of comet fragments about a year before it
actually hit; they looked at its orbit and said, "Wow!  This is
going hit Jupiter."  So, everyone was sitting there watching, as
this thing went up.  We had the Hubble telescope, all these
telescopes pointing; we saw this thing as well as we could from
all over the world.  This really was a major wake-up call to the
fact that these impacts really do occur.  They can come from
asteroids, which you saw in the illustration of the inner Solar
System, but they can also come from comets; which represents a
qualitatively different challenge, as we'll see in the next
animation. [Fig. 6]
        This should give you a sense of this greater, more difficult
challenge posed by comets.  This is a particular case of a comet
name C1996B2; and this was discovered in January 31, 1996.
That's when we first knew this comet even existed.  As you can
see in the animation which is based directly off of the orbital
data from NASA, we discovered this comet at the beginning of this
animation when it was just out past the orbit of Mars.  Within
two months, it made a close pass by the Earth.  We had no idea it
was out there until two months before it makes of close pass by
the Earth.  Whereas the object that hit over Russia — the
Chelyabinsk impact — was measured at about 20 meters in
diameter; this object is estimated to be about 5 kilometers in
diameter.  That's about half the diameter of the comet that's
believed to have taken out the dinosaurs.  As we let the
animation play out, we see something very interesting that's
characteristic of this distinct nature of the challenge of
comets.  Look at its orbit.  The circular orbits you see here are
the outer planets; that's Neptune's orbit.  So, this has an
extremely elliptical orbit that takes it far out into the depths
of the Solar System.  When these comets are out there in the far
reaches of the Solar System, they're incredibly difficult to see.
So, we only see them when they're starting to come into the inner
Solar System.  Again, as this case demonstrated, we saw this one
two months before it made a close pass.  If that had been on an
impact trajectory, there would have been nothing we could have
done.  When we're talking about that size of an object with these
comets, we're talking about something that can wipe out
civilization.  That is a global catastrophic impact, an object of
that size.  We're not talking about the local scale damage of the
asteroids we were talking about a second ago; we're talking about
catastrophic effects across the whole planet.
        So, this is another depiction [Fig. 7] of where we think
these bodies are.  Based on the orbits of these comets —
sometimes technically referred to as long period comets; it's
believed that many of these comets reside in the farthest
outreaches of the Solar System.  Far, far beyond the outer
planets.  This is a logarithmic scale, so you can see that this
distribution of comets — sometimes referred to as the Oort Cloud
— begins over tens of times past where Voyager has currently
reached, and extends tens times farther than that.  We're talking
about the very outskirts of the gravitational hold of the Sun.
It's believed, again, we haven't seen this region — but based on
the orbits of comets we see coming in just in the short time
period mankind has been able to make these observations — it's
believed that this is a very large population of bodies out in
this outer region of the Solar System.  Because the gravitational
effect of the Sun is so weak out there, it doesn't take much to
perturb their orbits and potentially send some into the inner
Solar System.  Again, with our current capabilities, we're
creating scenarios when we only see them months, maybe if we're
lucky a few years, before an impact.  Certainly not enough time
to do anything about it with our current capabilities.
        Now, I just want to end on kind of an interesting note, that
there are some studies — although the data is limited —
indicating there might be certain cyclical natures to these large
comet impacts.  Some people even believe it could relate to how
the Solar System moves through the galaxy; which raises some very
interesting questions about how this outer region of comets could
get perturbed on a periodic basis and send in what they call
"showers" — cometary showers of many comets coming into the
inner Solar System, creating a scenario where it's much more
likely that Earth or the other planets might get hit with an
impact as Jupiter got hit in the '90s.
        I think it's just worth noting that one of the leading
astronomers in this whole field, Eugene Shoemaker, who
unfortunately passed away in the late '90s, had pioneered much of
the work in this field.  And for whom this comet that impact
Jupiter is named; him and his wife, who discovered it together.
He himself believed that it is likely that we are currently in
the period of a comet shower; that was something that he
published in the late '90s.  Based upon the types of crater
records and other evidence, he said it's not certain, but it
could be the case that we're currently in the middle of what on a
human time scale is a long period in which there's an increased
frequency of cometary entries into the inner Solar System and an
increased likelihood of impacts occurring.  Whether this directly
accounts for his hypothesis or not, it was only last year that we
found out that a relatively dim star had actually passed through
the Oort Cloud about 70,000 years ago; which is one of the kinds
of scenarios that can perturb many of these bodies.  Again, since
these things are so far away, it can take 70,000 years for these
things to reach the inner Solar System.  The point is, this is
still incredibly preliminary knowledge of this region — of the
Oort Cloud; of the region between the Oort Cloud and the inner
Solar System.  There could be a long period comet that's only ten
years out, that's been travelling for 50,000 years from the Oort
Cloud, or even longer; and it's now only ten years away and it's
on a direct impact course with the Earth, and we wouldn't even
know.  It could be just in the outskirts of the outer planets
region of the Solar System; not even in this far, far depths
region.  Again, we're talking about things that can devastate
civilization completely, globally as we know it.
        This discovery of this dim star passing through the Oort
Cloud, we just found that out a year ago.  How many other bodies
are out there that might have had close passes in the
geologically recent past that could be doing similar effects?
The point is, our knowledge is incredibly miniscule for something
that threatens the entire planet; and our defense capability
doesn't exist.  This typifies just one of the issues; and I think
there's a lot more we're going to get into in coming shows.  But
this typifies one of the issues that is front and center for this
principle of the SDI, the SDE to re-emerge and center around.
These are threats that don't recognize national borders; they
don't recognize cultural boundaries.  They challenge the entire
planet and they're outside of our current capabilities.  If we're
going to have a sane and principled relationship for leading
nations in the planet, then it has to return to these kinds of
challenges.  Addressing these common aims and threats as Dr.
Edward Teller had spoken of, as Mr. LaRouche put on the table
with this whole SDI proposal.
        The point that I think we should really end on, and maybe
discuss a little bit in conclusion, is that — and this is
something that we've been discussing with Mr. LaRouche over the
recent weeks — this isn't a separate, isolated issue.  This is
part of mankind becoming a Solar System species.  This is part of
mankind expanding to a new level, developing a platform of
economic activity that makes mankind a presence, an active force
in the Solar System.  We can come up with specific scenarios
where you can deflect one asteroid or maybe a particular
telescope that can help us see some of these things; and we
should be discussing and looking at those things.  But the
fundamental issue is, how do we expand mankind into the Solar
System as a much more active and capable presence where we can
handle these kinds of challenges?  How do we engage other nations
in cooperation and collaboration, instead of hiding our
technology and hiding our capabilities because we want to have a
leg up over China or Russia?  How do we jointly develop the
fundamental science and technologies mankind needs to defend the
planet Earth in an open, cooperative way?
        If we're going to seriously, actually get into that, Mr.
LaRouche has been emphatic; that takes us right to the work of
Krafft Ehricke, his collaboration with Krafft Ehricke, and these
early space pioneers who really worked out the fundamental
principles of mankind's development of the Solar System.  I think
that is fully integrated with this Strategic Defense of Earth
perspective.  I think Kesha might have more to say, but that's
going to be a critical part of this new space paradigm that we've
been discussing in recent weeks.

        KESHA ROGERS:  Very good.  I wanted to go back and really
take up this conception of what it really means to advance the
cause for peace.  Because first of all, we have to end the
perpetuation and acceptance of a big lie, a murderous lie that
human beings cannot have access to that which is truthful.  This
is what the fight really is.  When you're talking about the
murderous policy of Obama, it's not a matter of opinion or
whether or not you have a belief or non-belief, or like or
dislike this President.  This President is acting on behalf of
the same factions which are indicative of what Bertrand Russell
actually represented.  He set back the cause of human progress in
society.  To say that if you make enough people believe that snow
is black, or you perpetuate a lie enough; then enough people will
believe it.  But now, we're seeing that that's not working
anymore.  That the cause that Bertrand Russell and those who were
against the genius of Albert Einstein that mankind can have
access to that which is truthful, that system is being destroyed;
it's losing out, and there is a new era, a new system of mankind
emerging that is being represented by what the United States has
the potential to become if we break with the lies that have been
perpetuated and say, "No more!  Obama must be thrown in jail
now."  Anybody who's pushing this policy that we have to be at
odds with nations such as Russia and China, are continuing to set
back the progress of mankind.  This is not just about waiting for
the next election and saying OK, well we dealt with Obama and
hopefully we can survive this next few weeks or so.  The question
is, that people who continue to allow for this murderous policy
to dominate the thinking and the direction of our nation, cannot
be tolerated.
        I think it's important to really look at what it is that
this President has done in setting back the course of human
progress by his dismantling and attacks on the manned space
program.  What you're really dealing with right now is that we
have to look at the advancement of the space program as a new
evolutionary leap in the progress of mankind.  To look at the
advancement of the space program not just as a discretionary
budgetary matter for internal US relations, but as Mr. LaRouche
said at the onset of this election when Mr. Trump was elected,
you now have a new system of international relations emerging.
The United States has to join with that.
        But when you're talking about advancing the cause of peace,
it's expressive of the fight that Mr. LaRouche, his wife Helga,
and this organization have been advancing and leading for a very
long time.  Then you talk about Mr. LaRouche's policy of the
Strategic Defense Initiative; a lot of people tried to lower that
to a scale of just missile defense and defense of nations acting
against the appearance of nuclear weapons from other nations, or
just on a small scale.  But what you're talking about, is the
advancement of an evolutionary leap in the progress of mankind
throughout the Solar System, throughout the Universe.  And
mankind understanding how to come together for a common aim of
mankind; to submit to the development of the whole of the Solar
System, which is going to increase our understanding of how to
advance mankind both here on Earth and off the planet.  This is
what has been missing.  The way people think about human economy,
the way people think about relationships to the advancement of
mankind in the Universe, is based on these small scale relations;
but it has to be completely changed at this point in time.  What
Krafft Ehricke discussed in terms of an extraterrestrial
imperative in his third law, was really taking the lid off on
human progress; that mankind was an expression of unlimited
potential.  He says in that third law that by expanding through
the Universe, man fulfills his destiny as an element of life
endowed with the power of Reason and the wisdom of moral law
within himself.
        The problem is that we have lost that sense of moral law
within mankind to act for the betterment of human beings and
human progress.  And have lost that power of Reason because we
refuse to fight for that which is truthful.  That has to end;
that has to be stopped now.  I think the fight going forward, has
to be centered around this basis; that we are going to uplift
human society out of the depths of despair, and actually organize
around a new commitment to human progress that has been missing
for far too long.
        I just wanted to say that because I think that we are on the
verge of a new era for mankind right now, but people have to get
a sense of it.  It's not going to happen unless you fight for it;
unless you fight to bring it into existence.  The starting point
of that is that we have to develop a new system of international
relations, working with Russia, with China; not as enemies, but
working together to end this threat to human progress that has
been going on for far too long.

        ROSS:   Absolutely!  I think that ties it also with that
other major leap that's needed in humanity of Lyndon LaRouche's
fourth law of his "Four Laws to Save the USA Now"; which is the
breakthrough to get fusion power.  Like this need for adopting a
platform that allows us to have a control over space, that let's
us really have this region of the Solar System; something that's
within our power, within our reach, within our ability to
interact with and intervene on if something is about to kill us
all.  The essential to make that happen is fusion power.  No
matter how efficient a windmill you design, or no matter what
breakthroughs they make in building solar panels, those aren't
ever going to be at all useful for moving into space.  You're not
going to go to Mars with a windmill.  What we are going to do
that's going to transform our relationship to nature — I think
this idea that we must grow; it's the characteristic of the human
species, this moral law that you spoke of, Kesha.  This law that
we have to answer to is that it's been the nature of the Universe
to develop; we've seen it with the creation of the Solar System.
We've seen it with the development of life on this planet into
increasingly higher forms; not in a purely qualitative way, but
also through some specific quantitative measures adopted by
Vladimir Vernadsky, for example.  Where he looked at the increase
of concentration of energy in forms of life; where he looked at
the increasing range of chemical elements that were used by life;
an increasing power and density of energy flow through the
biosphere.  That's really up to us at this point.  The Universe,
in a real way, depends upon us for those next levels of
development that are the fruits of our minds.  To create things
in nature that have never happened before.  Just like
multi-cellular life, that was a new thing that hadn't happened
before; chlorophyll — life going extraterrestrial to get the
power of the Sun to feed on.  That was something that hadn't been
seen before.  Now, it's the kinds of things that we do:
electromagnetism; the breakthroughs that we have available to us
with nuclear science, with fusion power.  This is the calling
that we have to respond to; this is something that we can come to
in resonance with other nations around the planet and really
cooperate on as a real basis for international relations.  Not
maintaining supremacy, or maintaining the power of a bloc; but
having a serious mission that is common to all people to
collaborate on and to move forward.

        DENISTON:  It's maybe a minor point relative to everything,
but I couldn't help noticing when Mr. Gravel mentioned that we
spent $5 billion over 10 years to destabilize Ukraine; that's
more per year than our fusion budget by a fair amount.  That's
$500 million a year; our fusion budget for magnetic confinement
has been significantly less than that.  Just in terms of a
particular reflection of the totality; we're spending more to
overthrow Ukraine, to mess with Russia, than we're spending on
what could be infinite power for mankind for centuries to come.

        ROSS:  Priorities, huh?

        DENISTON:  Yeah.

        ROSS:  All right.  I think that was a good discussion; we
hit on a lot of topics today.  I think if we keep ourselves
focussed on getting these Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche
implemented and preventing the hullaballoo now around this
Russian hacking, etc.  In these last periods of the current
administration, they're attempting to create some sort of
possibly irreversible conflict with Russia; that has to be
stopped, and the foundation for a new system of cooperation among
nations and people has to be put into place.  That's something
that we're very uniquely situated to do.  So, I look forward to
your help in making that a possibility and seeing you next time
on larouchepac.com.  Good bye.