Det, som EU hidtil, og igen på dette seneste topmøde-komsammen, har foreslået som respons til flygtningekrisen, er den totale moralske og politiske bankerot. Den idé, at man ved hjælp af kanonbåde skulle drive millioner af flygtninge fra Sydvestasien og Afrika tilbage, og tage tusinder og atter tusinder af dødsfald gennem drukning med i købet, alt imens man samtidig vil bevare den neoliberale, økonomiske politik, som er den faktor, der for Afrikas vedkommende har forårsaget underudviklingen, i hvilken årsagen til masseflugten igen skal findes, er lige så virkelighedsfjern, som den er modbydelig.

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11. december 2015 – Med det Tyske Udenrigsministerium som medsponsor er Technisches Hilfswerk (THW) begyndt at rekruttere syriske flygtninge til at uddanne og ansætte dem til civil beskyttelse og katastrofehjælp både i og uden for Tyskland, i tilfælde af oversvømmelser, jordskælv og lignende.

Et hundrede lokale enheder fra THW deltager i programmet, der går ud på at finde 1.000 flygtninge, der er interesseret i et sådant program. En fordel ved THW-initiativet er, at der ikke kræves tysk statsborgerskab og heller ikke, at man behersker det tyske sprog, for at en syrer kan blive ansat. THW-specialprogrammet er designet til også at forberede syrere til den senere opbygning af Syrien, med rydning af miner, bomber og andre former for krigsaffald og ammunition, samt genoprettelse af forsyninger af vand og elektricitet, transport og kommunikation.

Foto: Der forestår et enormt oprydnings- og genopbygningsarbejde i Syrien, når der engang kommer fred … Her, Aleppo.

Men hverken menneskehedens udslettelse i et termonukleart Armageddon eller ofringen af menneskeliv til fordel for finansoligarkiet er uundgåelig. At forhindre dette kræver først og fremmest, at man overvinder partianskuelser eller geopolitiske anskuelser og i stedet erstatter dem med et upartisk samarbejde på alle niveauer, for menneskehedens fælles interesser. Ikke overraskende viser EU, der siden Maastrichttraktaten har udviklet sig til et monstrum, i lyset af flygtningekrisen og det forestående finanskrak, sig ikke alene at være en mislykket model, men EU er yderligere nu ved at gennemføre en åbenlyst fascistisk politik. Det seneste fremstød i denne retning er Bruxelles meddelelse om, at den under alle omstændigheder allerede afskyelige EU-grænsekontrol-organisation Frontex skal erstattes af en ny organisation, der kontrolleres fra Bruxelles, og som deporterer flygtninge med egne grænsevagter, opererer i ikke-EU-medlemsstater og kan sætte sig ud over indvendinger fra medlemsstater. Dermed ville det i flygtningespørgsmålet komme til den største overførsel af suverænitet til Bruxelles, siden euroens indførelse.

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29. november 2015 – I kølvandet på Tyrkiets ensidige brud på NATO’s uskrevne regler for kamphandlinger med sin nedskydning af det russiske SU-24-fly, går EU nu frem med en belønning til Tyrkiet på 3 mia. euro og tilskynder Ankara til at forhindre sine syriske flygtninge i at gå ombord i plimsollere med kurs mod de nærliggende græske øer, rapporterer Reuters i dag og citerer et udkast, der er udfærdiget i kølvandet på dagens topmøde mellem EU og Tyrkiet i Bruxelles. Uden at nævne aftalen sagde EU-rådets præsident, Donald Tusk, til journalister, at hovedformålet for topmødet var at stemme op for strømmen af migranter til Europa. »Vi er nået frem til en aftale, som jeg håber, vil blive vedtaget af alle parter i dag«, sagde han.

Reuters bemærkede tidligere, at den tyske kansler Angela Merkel før mødet til reportere sagde, at »en væsentlig del af denne handleplan for EU og Tyrkiet vil dreje sig om, hvordan vi kan erstatte illegal migration med legal migration, hvordan vi kan forbedre situationen for flygtninge i Tyrkiet. Tyrkiet giver husly til godt og vel 2 millioner flygtninge, og har kun modtaget minimal international støtte, så Tyrkiet har en retmæssig forventning om, at EU og dens medlemsstater vil hjælpe Tyrkiet med at klare denne byrde.«

Den tyrkiske premierminister Ahmet Davutoglu, der den 28. nov. i tre timer havde møde med statsledere i EU, sagde ved sin ankomst til drøftelserne i Bruxelles, at det var »en ny begyndelse« for Tyrkiets forsøg på at blive medlem af EU, der har været sat i stå i 10 år. »I dag er en historisk dag i vores optagelsesproces til EU«, sagde Davutoglu til reportere. »Jeg er taknemlig over for alle europæiske ledere for denne nye begyndelse«, sagde han iflg. Reuters.

Foto: Tyrkisk flygtningelejr i grænsebyen Suruc, med 35.000 flygtninge. Lejren har to hospitaler, syv sundhedsklinikker og klasseværelser til 10.000 børn.    

Klimakonferencen i Paris må fokusere på de reelle og umiddelbare farer for menneskeheden: denne hastigt voksende flygtningekrise, de afgrundsdybe EU-økonomier og tab af arbejdspladser, samt de milliarder af mennesker over hele verden, der stadig lider under manglen på tilstrækkelig, stabil og billig energi, som er nødvendig for at gøre en ende på deres knusende fattigdom, fejlernæring, sygdom og tidlige død ved at sikre rent vand, ordentlige sanitære forhold, moderne hospitaler, lys, køleskabe og rigelig mad. Klimakonferencedeltagerne må adressere de følgende, langt mere presserende nødvendige spørgsmål.

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Helga Zepp-LaRouche, formand for det tyske, politiske parti BüSo (Borgerrettighedsbevægelsen Solidaritet), er den eneste, tyske leder, der har fremlagt løsningen: Tyskland må omgående trække sig ud af briternes og Obamas politik med regimeskift og krig og droppe den grønne dagsorden, til fordel for en total accept af den kinesisk anførte bevægelse for global opbygning gennem en Ny Silkevej. I denne ånd har Zepp-LaRouche helhjertet støttet opfordringen fra videnskabsfolkene Paul Dreissen og Joe D’Aleo om at forvandle topmødet i Paris til en begivenhed til mobilisering til fordel for at redde flygtningene med en reel, økonomisk genopbygningsplan.

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Med formand Tom Gillesberg

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Med formand Tom Gillesberg

19. november 2015 – Ifølge opinionsundersøgelser er det fremmedfjendske parti, Alternativ for Tyskland, AfD, allerede blevet det tredjestørste parti i Tyskland. Støtte til AfD er hastigt steget i de seneste måneder og uger, først som en reaktion på flygtningekrisen, og nu efter terrorangrebene i Paris og den politiske debat, der er domineret af panik.

Krisen og den politiske debat »er som et program, der er skræddersyet til at fremme AfD«, sagde prof. Jürgen Falter, der har hjemme i Mainz, på tysk Tv i dag. AfD »nærmer sig tocifrede tal nationalt – i de østlige stater nåede de derop for længe siden. Med andre ord, så har vi her en politisk magt, der er ved at komme ind i delstatsparlamenterne og sluttelig i det nationale parlament (Forbundsdagen), og som vil styre det politiske spil i en totalt anden retning. Denne magt vil af de andre parter blive anset som værende uegnet til at indgå koalition med.«

20. november 2015 – Hvis klimaforandrings-alarmisterne ønsker at diskutere den virkelige klimakrise i horisonten ved den forestående FN-COP21 Paris klimaforandrings-extravaganza, bør de formulere en plan til at forhindre, at ti tusinder af flygtninge fryser ihjel i Europa. Dette er temaet i en ny erklæring, »Terrorisme og Flygtningekrise i en Kold Vinter«, der blev udlagt den 19. november af videnskabsfolkene Paul Dreissen og Joe D’Aleo, med Allan MacRae og Madhav Khandekar, på icecap.us og nu også på mange andre websider.

Som de forklarer, så er ti tusinder af europæiske borgere frosset ihjel i vintre med ekstremt koldt vejr, hvilket er, hvad Europa har oplevet i en stor del af det forgangne årti. Disse dramatiske udsving i temperaturen er i realiteten fremkaldt, ikke af menneskelig aktivitet, men af Solen og andre relaterede kræfter. Men det er de handlinger, som de politiske beslutningstagere skrider til, der vil udgøre forskellen mellem liv og død.

Forfatterne påpeger, at, i ekstremt kolde år kan USA opleve omkring 100.000 ekstraordinære dødsfald. De rapporterer, at der generelt forekommer mere end 20 gange så mange dødsfald som følge af ekstrem kulde end ekstrem varme. For flygtningene, der lever i »ekstrem fattigdom, med dårlig ernæring, utilstrækkelig beklædning og tæpper, og som i forvejen er syge og har improviseret husly«, kunne tallet for ekstraordinære vinterdødsfald blive svimlende; endda højere end de ekstraordinære vinterdødsfald på 50.000 mennesker i Storbritannien.

»Når en million flygtninge fryser under forringede omgivelser med utilstrækkeligt husly, mad, varme, beklædning og lægehjælp, og når 1,3 milliard mennesker stadig ikke har elektricitet – hvorfor i alverden skulle verden så indgå et forpligtende engagement om at bruge milliarder på angivelige, fremtidige katastrofer som følge af global opvarmning?«, spørger de. »Vi må anerkende, at rædselsfulde scenarier, fremkommet i computermodeller, ikke er en refleksion af virkeligheden på planeten … «

»Det ville være en samvittighedsløs forbrydelse imod menneskeheden, hvis de nationer, der mødes i Paris, gennemtvinger politiske tiltag for at beskytte vores planets energi-berøvede masser fra hypotetiske, menneskeskabte klimakatastrofer, der skulle optræde årtier frem i tiden, ved at forevige fattigdom og sygdom, der dræber millioner af flere mennesker i morgen. Dette er de virkelige grunde til, at klimaforandring er et afgørende, moralsk spørgsmål, understreger de. »Dette er, hvad vi må erkende, og holde op med at lege med menneskers liv.«

Paul Dreissen er analytiker for Komiteen for et Kontruktivt I morgen (CFACT). Jason Ross fra LPAC’s Videnskabsteam interviewede for nylig Paul Dreissen, forfatter af ’Miljø-imperialisme: Grøn magt, Sort død’, til EIR’s seneste Specialrapport, »Skræmmekampagne mod Global Opvarmning er Befolkningsreduktion – ikke Videnskab« (Se interviewet på dansk). Joe D’Aleo, akademisk seniorstabsmedlem ved American Meteorological Society, er medstifter af The Weather Channel.

19. november 2015 – I en tale til en forsamling af Frankrigs borgmestre den 18. nov. sagde præsident François Hollande, at begivenhederne i Saint-Denis bekræftede, at Frankrig var »i krig … det, som er disse terroristers mål, er det, som Frankrig repræsenterer. Det var det, der blev angrebet den 13. nov. Disse barbarers mål var at ramme Frankrig i sin forskelligartethed. Det er Frankrigs ungdom, der var målet, simpelt hen fordi den repræsenterer livet.«

Premierminister Manuel Valls har bekræftet, at Abdelhamid Abaaoud, den angivelige planlægger bag angrebene den 13. nov., blev dræbt under en politirazzia i Saint-Denis. Indenrigsministeriet sagde, at politiet havde ransaget yderligere 118 adresser i hele landet natten mellem den 17. og 18. november og havde foretaget 25 arrestationer og beslaglagt 34 våben. Der er foretaget razzia mod flere end 400 huse, og 60 mennesker er blevet tilbageholdt, siden Frankrig erklærede undtagelsestilstand fredag, den 13. nov.

Efter planen skal Hollande besøge den amerikanske præsident Barack Obama for at vise den bydende nødvendighed af kampen mod Islamisk Stat, når de mødes i Washington i næste uge. Den britiske avis Guardian citerede en unavngiven diplomatisk kilde, der beskrev, hvad det er, Hollande vil klargøre for Obama.

»Det budskab, vi ønsker at sende USA, er simplet hen, at krisen er i færd med at destabilisere Europa. Problemet er, at angrebene i Paris og flygtningekrisen viser, at vi ikke har tid. Der er en nødsituation«, sagde kilden til Guardian. Han tilføjede: »Det er de udenlandske krigere, men det er også migranterne, der splitter europæerne og destabiliserer kontinentet, så vi må handle hurtigt og fortælle USA’s regering, at kerneinteresser for europæerne, jeres bedste allierede, står på spil.« Pointen er, at Obama efter Frankrigs mening nægter at handle hurtigt nok. »Det er grunden til, at den franske præsident vil være i Washington på tirsdag, før han flyver videre til Moskva for at mødes med præsident Putin.«

I sin tale til Nationalforsamlingen for at forlænge undtagelsestilstanden advarede den franske premierminister Manuel Valls om, at terrorister i fremtiden kunne benytte kemiske og biologiske våben.

Ansøgninger til den franske hær er steget voldsomt, fra 135 om dagen til 500 om dagen, siden regeringen meddelte, at den vil rekruttere yderligere 15.000 personel i år og yderligere 16.000 i 2016. Den franske hær består i øjeblikket af 115.000 mænd og kvinder.

Foto: Soldater på Champs Elysées, Paris, med Triumfbuen i baggrunden. Undtagelsestilstanden er efter premierminister Manuel Valls begæring til Nationalforsamlingen blevet forlænget med 3 måneder.

Med formand Tom Gillesberg

13. november 2015 – Det forlyder, at der er en aftale på vej mellem Den europæiske Union og Tyrkiet om flygtningespørgsmålet, der, som forventet, er fuldstændig utilstrækkelig i forhold til opgaven. The Guardian rapporterer, at det blev besluttet, under et EU-hastetopmøde på Malta på sidelinjen af EU-Afrika-topmødet, at tilbyde Tyrkiet 3 mia. euro til gengæld for at systematisere flygtningestrømmen til Europa, og som ville omfatte registrering af flygtninge i Tyrkiet og med Europa, der indvilliger i at tage et vist antal hvert år. Tyrkiet skal så acceptere ikke-syriske flygtninge, der forlod Tyrkiet for Europa, men som ikke kvalificerer til flygtningestatus. Pengene skal gå til flygtningenes underhold i Tyrkiet. Der skal være et topmøde senere på måneden eller i december med Tyrkiet for en endelig aftale.

Den tyrkiske avis Hurriyet rapporterer ligeledes, at der har været forhandlinger mellem EU-kommissionsvicepræsident Frans Timmermans og højtrangerende tyrkiske regeringsfolk den 11. nov. i Ankara, hvor en flygtningeaftale, der er parallel med den, Guardian rapporterer om, blev udarbejdet i udkast. Udkastet kræver også en genoplivelse af forhandlinger om Tyrkiets medlemskab af EU, ved at åbne for flere kapitler og bestemmelser om tyrkiske borgeres rejse uden visum til Schengen-zonen. Til gengæld vil Tyrkiet begynde at gennemføre en aftale om, at migranter igen kan komme ind i landet. Aftalen skal ratificeres af regeringslederne. Timmermans vil fremlægge aftalen for EU-rådet i december, hvor man vil søge enstemmig godkendelse.

I mellemtiden vil præsident for EU-kommissionen Jean-Claude Juncker afholde diskussioner med den tyrkiske præsident Recep Tayyip Erdogan på sidelinjen af G20-topmødet i Antalya, Tyrkiet, den 15.-16. nov.

Det er interessant, at, alt imens Tyrkiet tilbydes 3 mia. euro, så har EU-medlemmet Grækenland, hvor henved 600.000 flygtninge er ankommet til siden januar i år, modtaget sølle 8 mio. euro.

EU-Afrika-topmødet den 10. nov. domineredes også af flygtningespørgsmålet, hvor europæerne krævede, at de afrikanske lande tager såkaldte økonomiske flygtninge tilbage til gengæld for blot 2 mia. euro. De afrikanske ledere siges at have været rasende over EU’s holdning.

Med formand Tom Gillesberg

Lyd:

9. november 2015 – Den tyske udenrigsminister Frank-Walter Steinmeier var på officielt besøg i Athen den 29. okt. for drøftelser med græske regeringsfolk, inkl. udenrigsminister Nikos Kotzias. Højt på dagsordenen for begge parter stod flygtningekrisen og krigen i Syrien. Den 30. okt. udgav det græske Udenrigsministerium et udskrift på engelsk af deres pressekonference den 29. okt., under hvilken de begge kom med vigtige erklæringer.

Med hensyn til flygtningekrisen understregede udenrigsminister Kotzias, som også andre græske regeringsfolk har gjort, at hovedspørgsmålet er at løse krigen i Syrien, samt den kendsgerning, at FN’s Flygtningehøjkommissariat (UNHCR) er blevet ribbet for finansiering.

Kotzias sagde, at han tilbage i februar i tyske medier advarede om, at nedskæringerne i finansieringen af FN’s hjælpeoperationer for flygtninge ville føre til en massiv stigning i flygtningestrømmen. Han advarede igen under pressekonferencen, at han har informationer om, at henved 300.000 flygtninge er en route fra lejre i Jordan og Libanon, og at flygtninge i tyrkiske lejre er ved at sælge alle deres ejendele for at kunne foretage den lange rejse.

Kozias siger, at disse mennesker kun er en del af 3 millioner mennesker, der lever i flygtningelejrene, og som nu rejser, fordi de bogstavelig talt sulter i lejrene. Han uddybede nedskæringerne i finansieringen, der er faldet fra 150 dollar pr. familie i lejrene til nu 13 dollar, dvs. ca. 0,43 dollar om dagen. Steinmeier var enig og sagde, at Tyskland havde sammenkaldt et G7-møde på sidelinjen af FN’s Generalforsamling, som havde rejst 1,7 mia. dollar blot til at finansiere mad i lejrene, men at det ikke var nær nok.

Kotzias kom også med en magtfuld intervention til støtte for den ægyptiske regering og sagde: »Der er ingen, der bør lege med ilden og destabilisere andre lande i regionen. Nogle kan godt lide at mødes med det Muslimske Broderskab i Egypten. Det forstår jeg. Jeg har aldrig været tilhænger af militærregimer. Min generation sad i militærjuntaens fængsler. Stabilitet og sikkerhed i regionen kommer først. Har nogen overvejet, hvad der ville ske i tilfælde af et kaotisk kollaps af det egyptiske regime, med 96 mio. mennesker, af hvilke 62 mio. er unge og uden identitet, fremtid, jobs? Og bag disse titals millioner er der 45 mio., der nu er ved at komme frem fra borgerkrigen i Sudan, så vel som også den fejlslagne stat Somalia. Efter min mening må vi afvende destabiliseringen i denne region fra toppen og ned, for ellers vil flygtningesituationen i Middelhavet virkelig komme ud af kontrol. Som følge heraf må vi træffe mange, mange flere forholdsregler.«

Steinmeier pointerede også, at der ikke kan findes en løsning og afslutning på krigen i Syrien uden at involvere præsident Bashar al-Assad.

Foto: Tyrkiet: De sælger, pakker og rejser. For at overleve.    

6. november 2015 – Konfronteret med de særlige udfordringer, som den store indstrømning af flygtninge har skabt, opfordrer den tyske byggeindustri nu til, at man tager metoder til »industrifremstillet husbyggeri« i anvendelse, med prototyper, der kan bygges billigt i hele Tyskland inden for blot få måneder. Dette er, hvad Michael Knipper, adm. dir. for byggeindustriens sammenslutning i Tyskland, sagde i et interview til Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.

Et forceret program, og ikke kun for husbyggeri, er så sandelig presserende nødvendigt: Nye statistiktal over industriproduktionen i Tyskland viser, at der i september var et fald på 1,1 %, sammenlignet med august. Faldet var størst i industrien med 1,4 %, det samme som i maskinværktøjsfremstillingssektoren. Produktion af forbrugsvarer faldt endda 3,2 %. Byggesektoren blot minus 0,9 %.

Tiden er kommet for et nationalt, forceret program: bolig-/husbyggeri, infrastruktur og nye industrifabrikker!

http://orf.at/stories/2308569/2308570/

Dette webcast: Obama beordrer mediecensur af dækning af afsløringer af Drone-papirerne. Seneste afsløringer om bombning af LuG’s hospital i Kunduz – LuG udgiver egen rapport. Hundrede tusinder af flygtninge pga. Obamas ulovlige krige i Sydvestasien og Nordafrika. Faren for global udslettelse i 3. Verdenskrig vokser, pga. Obamas krigsprovokationer mod Rusland og Kina. O.m.a. Engelsk udskrift.

TRANSCRIPT:

MATTHEW OGDEN: Good evening. It’s November 6, 2015. My name is Matthew Ogden, and you’re watching our weekly broadcast here from larouchepac.com of our international Friday night webcast. I’m joined in the studio tonight by Jeffrey Steinberg of Executive Intelligence Review, as well as Megan Beets of the LaRouche PAC Science and Research Team.

Now, the three of us did have a chance to meet with Helga and Lyndon LaRouche just a few hours ago; so that has definitely informed the content of the broadcast that you’ll hear tonight. What you will hear tonight is a thorough exposition of the continually building case for immediate legal action to be taken against the murderous policies of the Barack Obama Presidency. The case against him continues to snowball. You’ll hear about the media censorship that was ordered directly from the Obama White House to eliminate any coverage in the leading newspapers of record of the United States, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, of the damning story that was broken by Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill in The Intercept of the so-called “Drone Papers”; which exposes the lurid details of Obama’s weekly kill sessions, which have routinely resulted in innumerable innocent civilian deaths. You’ll hear about the most recent revelations in the case of the bombardment of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan; in which it is now being revealed that doctors and other medical personnel who were fleeing the hospital, fleeing the bombardment of this medical facility, were systematically gunned down by US military gunships. [This is] further building the case that this is indeed an intentional targetting of a medical facility, and amounts to nothing less than a war crime. You’ll hear about the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have been fleeing the illegal wars that have been perpetrated by the Obama administration in the Middle East and northern Africa, resulting in the massive social displacement of entire portions of these populations as well as widespread death and destruction, as Obama continues to lend his support to the overthrow, by radical jihadists, of sitting sovereign governments in this region. You’ll hear about the shocking statistics of the rise in the death rates, rising dramatically throughout the United States; particularly among the former skilled, industrial and manufacturing labor force, who were sacrificed at the altar of the bail-out of the bankrupt Wall Street banks by first the Bush and now the Obama administrations. One of the leading causes of this increase in death rates across the United States, and especially in this formerly productive sector of the American labor force, is an unbelievable surge in deaths from heroin and related drug overdoses; not only among the inner city minority populations, but also now among suburban middle and upper class white populations, surpassing automobile and firearms rates of mortality and now reaching an epidemic level as characterized by the Centers of Disease Control.

And finally, you’ll hear about the continuing mounting danger of global extinction warfare as the Obama administration continues to attempt to provoke World War III confrontations with both Russia and China. Now, this final item was the explicit discussion at a landmark event that occurred earlier this past Wednesday on Capitol Hill; which I personally had the opportunity to attend and to be an eyewitness to. This extraordinary event was set up as an informal hearing by Representative John Conyers, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and the dean of the House of Representatives — the longest serving member of Congress on the House side. Also in attendance were a number of other Congressmen, including Representatives Barbara Lee, Alan Grayson, Charlie Rangell, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Congressman Walter Jones among others. The distinguished members of the panel at this informal hearing were all founders of the recently re-established American Committee for East-West Accord, including: former US Ambassador Jack Matlock, who was ambassador to the Soviet Union under President Ronald Reagan; NYU Professor Steven Cohen; and John Pepper, a leading businessman and former CEO of Proctor & Gamble. The subject of this hearing was none other than the fact that the Obama policies are on the verge of provoking a thermonuclear confrontation with Russia; a subject which was explicitly presented in those terms, and the fact that without a drastic change in US-Russian relations which must be induced, there is no way that this World War III confrontation can be avoided.

The invitation to this event, which was published by the Committee on East-West Accord and was circulated by the office of Congressman John Conyers, read in part as follows: “The Ukrainian crisis represents a low in US-Russia relations not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union. And the recent Russian involvement in the Syrian situation is now making the danger even worse. American and Russian jets flying bombing missions in close proximity to one another, raises the possibility of a military accident between two nuclear-armed powers. As the New York Times warned, the complicated and shifting landscape of alliances leaves us ‘edging closer to an all-out proxy war between the United States and Russia.’ The majority of Americans never lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 or the darkest days of the Cold War. They have led lives without the looming specter of nuclear war, but the areas of conflict between our nations are growing. The conflict in Ukraine, the expansion of NATO, Russia’s involvement in Syria, and other lesser issues are driving a new wedge between the US and Russia. While most would agree that conflict between the United States and Russia benefits no one, the likelihood of such a conflict, as well as the serious consequences that it would bring, is not being discussed on Capitol Hill.”

In the interest of fostering more robust debate on US-Russia relations, Representative Conyers has convened an informal hearing featuring four eminent American experts on this subject, and those four members were the members that I named: the members of the board of the recently re-established American Committee for East-West Accord.

Now each member of this panel, and a number of the Congressmen, each in their own way referred to the darkest days of the Cold War, which they all remembered as members of the senior statesmen of this country. John Conyers being the dean of the House of Representatives, Jack Matlock being a former ambassador and a close collaborator of President Ronald Reagan — they referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis. They recalled the experience of duck and cover, hiding under one’s desk, nuclear air raid drills, underground bomb shelters, nuclear bunkers, and stated that although the situation at that time seemed bad, the situation today is as bad, or worse; and that unless the direct provocations against Russia are halted, there is very real possibility which exists of open nuclear warfare breaking out, and exterminating the human race.

Ambassador Matlock echoed much of what he had stated previously during previous appearances in Washington, D.C., but also especially during his recent appearance on the same dais as President Vladimir Putin at the Valdai discussion club in Sochi, Russia two weeks ago. Matlock elaborated the 20-year process of broken promises and outright lies and deceptions that resulted in the Eastward expansion of NATO all the way up to Russia’s borders, which has an immediate and calculated threat to Russia’s domestic security, worse than, in fact, as Matlock pointed out, the Berlin crisis of 1961. The fact that Berlin was not directly on Russia’s borders, but now you have the immediate proximity of Ukraine, and other countries right on the borders of Russian territory.

Steven Cohen underscored Matlock’s remarks and warned point-blank, in no uncertain terms, that the placement of one more base on Russia’s borders, or the incorporation of one more country in Eastern Europe into the NATO security alliance, military alliance, would mean war between the U.S. and Russia, and everything that entails. He pointed out that Michael McFaul’s blog has shifted from what he called “Mickey Mouse democracy promotion” to now, all-out strident calls for outright warfare and regime change provocations. Cohen emphasized that the danger of war today is far worse than at any time during the Cold War, mostly because of this cross-partisan 100% close-to-consensus when it comes to the demonization of Putin, and Russia, and the lack of any substantial pushback from among the corridors of power in Washington, against this narrative, especially from within Congress — although this was something which, he noted, was changing with this historic event, changing in front of the eyes of all those who attended this event, over a packed audience, standing room only, with this hearing that was sponsored by John Conyers and other members of Congress: the first open discussion of this kind in a forum such as this by anyone on Capitol Hill.

And finally, John Pepper made a very impassioned call for a completely new paradigm in U.S.-Russia relations, one which is founded on a concept of common security, and a creation of a mutual common security architecture, against what he identified as the real enemies, as opposed to the made-up enemies: the real enemies of both the United States and of Russia. Number one: international terrorism, and ISIS, in specific. And number two: what he identified as the greatest enemy of all mankind, which is thermonuclear warfare itself. He stated, the true enemy that we must guard ourselves against is the enemy of nuclear annihilation, and I think we can all find common cause in that.

So, as I said, this was really an extraordinary event, especially when you juxtapose it to another event which was happening literally simultaneously on Capitol Hill, just a few doors down from this hearing room. And this was a hearing featuring none other than Victoria Nuland herself, and that counterposition was pointed out very clearly by numerous participants in this event, both members of the panel, and members of the audience, as representative of the two stark choices that are facing the American people right now: Obama’s World War III and thermonuclear annihilation, or a new international policy of cooperation and partnership with Russia, as well as with China. Which means the immediate end of the murderous and deadly policies of the Obama administration.

So, with that said, I’d like to ask Jeff Steinberg to come to the podium for the next segment of tonight’s broadcast, to elaborate a little bit more on what I’ve just covered.

JEFF STEINBERG: Thanks, Matt. There was obviously some important things that were said during that John Conyers event on Wednesday afternoon up on Capitol Hill, but I think it’s critical to recognize that there was one thing that was not said, and that was that the only viable solution is the removal of President Obama through either impeachment, or invoking of the 25th Amendment, or some combination of actions, as happened with Richard Nixon, to force his immediate resignation.

The fact of the matter is that you had prominent American diplomats, prominent American scholars, leading members of Congress, standing there, and saying to the American people that the President of the United States is pushing the world towards thermonuclear annihilation, and yet nobody took it to the logical conclusion, which is that we’ve got to get this guy out of office.

Now in our discussion earlier today with Lyn and Helga LaRouche, Mr. LaRouche really was reflecting on where we stand, in terms of the dangers represented to, really, the survival of the entire trans-Atlantic region. Because that’s really what’s on the table right now. Assuming we even avoid the immediate threat of thermonuclear war and annihilation, the simple fact is that if the current trendlines continue, without a reversal, in a very short period of time the entire trans-Atlantic region will be doomed, will be finished, will not resemble anything like what Europe and the United States historically represented, particularly the United States.

Parts of South America may very well survive, because they’re already aligning themselves with the Asia-Pacific region, and with Eurasia more broadly, where countries like China, India, Russia are doing relatively well compared to the complete breakdown process that’s inflicted the entire trans-Atlantic region.

Now the problem of not directly addressing the clear and obvious solution to the this crisis, namely the constitutional removal of President Obama from office, is in fact indicative of a much deeper problem, a problem that very few people other than people like Mr. LaRouche think about constantly. The bottom line is that since the very beginning of the 20th Century, since the intervention by Lord Bertrand Russell and others around him to destroy Classical science, and to replace it with mathematics and with the disease of pragmatism, since that process began at the beginning of the 20th Century, we’ve been on a steady downward trajectory — culturally, economically, philosophically, morally. We’ve been, throughout the trans-Atlantic region, in a slow but now intensifying complete collapse of society, and when you broach the issue of a President who has committed atrocities, such as his drone kill policy. All you need to do, is go back on the LaRouche PAC website, and review the last three Friday evening webcasts. You’ll have all of the details you need to know about that.

The fact that there has not been a move to remove this president from office, is because the disease of pragmatism has infected our political institutions to such a great degree, and has infected our general population to an even greater degree, that the only measure that can prevent the possible annihilation of mankind, is considered to be “unpractical, it’s not pragmatic, there’s no guarantee that this process will succeed.” So, we’ve been on this long trajectory downward. It’s very much like the principle of how you boil a frog. If you put a pot of water on the stove, and get that water boiling to a full boil, and try to throw the frog in the boiling water, the frog’s going to jump right out. He’ll run away and you’ll never find him. If you put the frog in a pot of warm water, comfortably warm water, and have a low flame, then, gradually, that water will reach a boiling point, and the frog won’t notice it, because the incremental changes are gradual. That’s why you’ve got to look back and consider where we are as a trans-Atlantic civilization today, and ask yourself, from that standpoint: can we survive by continuing to cling to pragmatism and avoid taking the necessary urgent measures that can save us from otherwise certain doom?

The drone policy, as Mr. LaRouche emphasized in our discussion today: it’s emblematic of Obama. He’s a mass killer. He boasted to White House staff, back in 2011, that he was really good at killing. Coming into the office of the Presidency, he had no idea how good he was at targeting people to be killed by others. But that’s the character of it; that’s what the “Drone Papers,” like the “Pentagon Papers” earlier, brought down [president] Richard Nixon. The “Drone Papers,” alone, are more than sufficient to bring down President Obama. But it has not yet happened, because a few phone calls from the White House to the New York Times, to the Washington Post, got the word out: this story is taboo; it’s not practical to tell the truth about this mass murderer, because we might get cut off from access to the White House. So, you’ve got this phenomenon.

You have the new reports that Matt just mentioned, that, at the bombing of the Doctors Without Borders [msf] hospital in Kunduz [afghanistan], more and more evidence is coming out that it was a pre-meditated assault on an international medical facility under the lamest of excuses, and that as doctors and nurses and patients were fleeing, they were being shot, on the grounds that anybody who was there was automatically, de facto, Taliban and fair game for another mass kill.

But there’s many, many more things to consider. You have the conditions of life of the American people, which have been destroyed, systematically, boiling-frog style, over a period of, really, the last 40 years, or you could say even the period going back to the death of [president] Franklin Roosevelt in April of 1945. It’s been a largely downward trajectory ever since then, and that is merely a slice of the process that began right at the turn of the 20th Century, with Bertrand Russell’s invasion and assault against science. If you look back at the sweep of the 19th Century, you had some of the greatest accomplishments in culture and in science — in real, physical science. You had [bernhard] Riemann, you had the great classical composers — Beethoven, Brahms. You had the work of Friedrich Schiller, branching over from the 1700s into the 1800s. You had a renaissance underway, particularly in Europe, particularly in Germany, during the end of the 19th Century, covering the whole sweep of that Century. And suddenly, it came it came to a screeching halt, with the British top-down intervention, personified by Bertrand Russell. And we’ve been on a cultural downslide ever since. If you destroy the culture, you destroy the moral fabric of a society.

So, where are we now? Earlier today, as I’m sure many of you are aware, a series of propagandistic lies were put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, saying that 271,000 jobs were created last month in the United States, and that the unemployment rate is now officially down to 5%. Five percent unemployment is considered to be tantamount to full employment.

Well, those figures are an absolute lie, and I think if any of you think about it, any of you watching this broadcast now, think about whether your conditions of life are better or worse than they were at the start of the Obama presidency, or, even more so, at the end of the Clinton presidency, when Bush and Cheney came in. If you say, “My conditions are better, my prospects for my children and grandchildren are better,” then you are in an extremely small minority. The simple reality is that half of the 271,000 jobs claimed to have been created, are purely fictitious. They’re the result of a mathematical slight-of-hand trick, projecting, on average, death and life rates and starts of new businesses and bankruptcies. But there’s nothing normal about the current economy. So, forget that number! If you take the fact that 94 million working-age Americans, qualified to be in the labor force, are not counted as part of the labor force, because they are either chronically unemployed or have never been able to find a job, then if you add those 94 million people, working-age people, in, you find that the actual unemployment rate in the United States, is 23%! That number is on a par with the worst, darkest, days of the Great Depression in the 1930s, before Roosevelt put people back to work.

We have statistics that have come out. A study came out just this past week from Harvard University, indicating that for the first time in a long time, there are more and more Americans dying during their middle-age — their 40s and 50s. And this is due to a combination of job loss, of lack of access to adequate medical care, addiction to drugs and alcohol — again, a reflection of a process of chronic unemployment or under-employment. In rural United States, according to a report in the New York Times earlier this week, the rate of suicides is rising astronomically.

In a few moments, Megan will give you a detailed readout on the fact that we’re in the midst of a heroin epidemic in the United States, and it’s mostly afflicting middle class and upper middle class households all over the country. You have all of the signs there, as if anyone out there needed to be reminded or told about the actual collapse of the conditions of life.

So, this has occurred during the period of the Bush-Cheney administration and during the period of Obama. There’s nothing that we can do right now, in particular, about Bush and Cheney, from the standpoint they’re out of office. They should have been impeached for a whole range of reasons, and they were not impeached. Yet President Obama is the current President. And he stands guilty of crimes that even go beyond the scope of what Bush and Cheney did. The drone killing policy is a policy of mass murder. In effect, you should be thinking about President Obama from the standpoint of somebody who is a bigger mass murderer than Charles Manson. How would you feel about having Charles Manson in the White House? Well, guess what? Maybe you do. So, the question is, and this is addressed to the outstanding individual who did appear at that Congressional forum, and it’s also addressed to you, the American people. When are you going to shed the disease of pragmatism and face the reality of the situation that you are now living through? This is not something you watch on television, or read about in the newspapers or on your personal computer. This is the life that you are being subjected to; and there’s no reason for it.

The trans-Atlantic region is dead; the US economy is dead. The European economy is even more dead in many areas than the US economy is. Yet, Asia is not thriving because of the impact of the trans-Atlantic crisis; but Asia is doing vastly better. There’s growth going on. China, India, even Russia; there’s growth going on in the entire region. There’s a perspective of optimism, about space exploration, about extending the high-speed links from the Asia-Pacific coast on to the Atlantic coast of Europe. The United States and Europe are living as if on a different planet with a different mindset; and that can and must be broken. And one of the first steps that must be taken is that there’s got to be a genuine outpouring that says that this President’s got to go. That Wall Street has got to be shut down; because one of the greatest crimes that President Obama has committed has been to be a lackey of Wall Street and the City of London. To put their interests above those of the American people.

So, it’s time to wake up to your own condition and do something about it, and as I say, there are leading political figures who are scared to death that we are on the cusp of thermonuclear war; they’re now talking about it more openly. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not insignificant that leading American diplomats and members of Congress talked about the fact that we’re on the edge of thermonuclear war at a public forum on Capitol Hill. But how many of you even knew about that before you heard this broadcast tonight? I can assure you, you did not read it on the front page of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal; you didn’t hear about it on the six o’clock news. So, it’s time to wake up; and those people, who are in responsible leading positions, have got to stop being pragmatic and pulling their punches. And they’ve got to join us and join Mr. LaRouche in saying “We’ve got an immediate mission. We’ve got to bring down this Presidency, and we’ve got to bring down Wall Street.” If you don’t do that, then you’re not serious about stopping thermonuclear war, and you’re not serious about turning around the collapse of the entire trans-Atlantic region.

So, that’s the issue on the table. And it was a wonderful event on Wednesday, but this missing ingredient is deadly if it’s not actually picked up.

MEGAN BEETS: So, on the topic of Obama being very good at killing, let’s take a closer look at what’s been done to the working population of the United States over the course of the Bush and Obama Presidencies. As Jeff mentioned, on November 4, the Drug Enforcement Administration released their 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Report, which paints a similar report released by the CDC in August; a staggering picture of the drug use and drug overdose increases in the United States, which has risen to epidemic levels under the regimes of Bush and Obama. The document reports that drug-related deaths, as Matthew mentioned in the opening, drug-related deaths have risen to become the leading cause of injury death in the United States. More than firearms; more than car accidents. And in 2013 alone, the United States lost 46,470 people to drug overdoses; 46,000 people. That’s more than 120 per day. Now among drugs, controlled prescription drugs — mainly opioids and heroin — account for the largest type of drug by far; and the slight decline of the use of prescription drugs is being steadily replaced by the use of heroin, as people shift over to what’s a much more deadly drug. But what’s also much cheaper and much, much more widely available.

Now, to illustrate that a little bit, in 2013 there were 169,000 new users of heroin; many of them very young. Between 2013 and 2014, the rate of current heroin use — in other words, people who have used heroin in the past 30 days — rose by 51%. Between 2007 and 2013 — or in other words, during the course of Obama’s Presidency — the addiction to heroin rose 150%; and the deaths by overdose of heroin more than tripled.

Now the primary area where this increase of death has occurred, is in the Midwest; the formerly industrial centers that LaRouche took the spear point to save over the course of 2005 and the following years, when under the Bush-Cheney administration the auto industry and related machine tool sectors were gutted and crushed. Now it’s the Midwest, followed closely by New England and the New York/New Jersey area; all of these the formerly productive industrial centers of the country which have suffered in every way under Bush and Obama. Now the increase, as you might guess, for the most part is not concentrated in the inner cities; although I will mention that in the city of Baltimore, one in ten people is a heroin user. It’s not centered among the poorest people in the country; it’s centered in the middle class, the working class. For example, families with an income of $50,000 or more, for families of that income rate, heroin addiction has risen by 60% in the last 4 years. These are working class, upper class families and their children.

But this picture of the epidemic use of drugs is just part of a broader picture. Death is on the rise under President Obama. A study was released just a few weeks ago in September, which is this week receiving wide coverage, which states that since 1999, over the course of the four terms of Bush and Obama, the death rate among middle-aged white Americans in the age range of 45-54 has risen dramatically; in an unprecedented way. 10 % overall, and 20 % among the poorer, less educated strata. This increase of the death rate of middle-aged people is not a natural shift in demographics; it’s not due to some overall change in disease mortality rates. In fact, for comparison, in comparable industrialized countries around the world, the mortality rate for exactly this class of people has fallen by 25 % to 30 %. So, this is purely the result of a conscious policy in the United States by Bush and Obama.

The leading cause is not disease. The leading causes are signs of the complete degeneration and despair among the American population: drug abuse; alcohol abuse. And in fact, the authors of the report note particularly, heroin and other opioid overdoses; suicide. And as Jeff referenced, in rural areas of the United States, the suicide rates since 2004 have risen by 20%.

So here you have an overview of the stark reality of the Obama death policy, so clearly seen in the attack on the hospital in Afghanistan, turned against the American people. When presented with some of these figures the other day, LaRouche responded with this: He said, “Why didn’t we, as a nation, respond years back, and take action to stop this from happening? How did people get set up to accept the economic policies of destruction of science, of industry, along with endless bail-outs of Wall Street? How were we induced to submit to do this to ourselves?” So, I’d like to ask Jeff to come to the podium to respond and elaborate.

STEINBERG: I think it goes back to what I said earlier. Slowly, the level of culture, the level of real science that had permeated our culture even here in the United States in the 19th Century has been under steady and constant assault; largely coming from the British, particularly reflected in people like Lord Bertram Russell, who wrote books professing to be about science. He wrote a book in 1951, The Impact of Science on Society; he didn’t talk about science. He talked about methods of destruction of young minds by turning the education system into a system that basically drives people into accepting their subservience to be trained, to be submissive, to be non-inquisitive. And again, the disease that Russell imposed from the beginning of the 20th Century, was the disease of replacing physical science with mathematics. Everything comes down to a formula; everything comes down to a probability. If it’s not highly probable, then it’s not practical, and therefore, don’t go there.

So, you’ve had an assault on education, both from the kindergarten level on up, all the way to the major universities professing to be the great halls of advanced education. You’ve had a culture that has been destructive in the most unbelievable and egregious way. And the net effect is that even compared to the early 1970s, people have lost a certain sense of fight. They’d rather watch reality television. Our leaders have accepted the idea that there are boundary conditions on what they can even dare think about.

Last week on this broadcast, we talked about former Senator Mike Gravel, who, as a lowly first-term Senator from Alaska, had the audacity to put the Pentagon Papers in the Congressional record. That act in 1971 led to the demise of President Nixon, and contributed mightily to the end of the Vietnam War. So, there are glimmers of recognition among some of our elder statesmen that things used to be different. And so, we’ve got an enormous challenge on our hands right now. Do we continue to tolerate, even knowing that the President of the United States is sitting down every Tuesday afternoon with a small group of White House advisors and basically ordering the murder of individual citizens from nations all over the world, some of them American citizens, without any kind of oversight, and without any accountability for his actions?

As Megan just said, he’s presided over an invasion of drugs, whether it’s over the counter, prescription or black-market illegal drugs; we have 94 million citizens of working age who are not working in the real economy. Clearly not every one of those people is sleeping under a bridge somewhere. How many of them are directly involved in the black market economy that’s shoving heroin at a record rate into the arms of American citizens? It’s all of a package.

And again, as I said earlier, and as Mr. LaRouche emphasized in our discussion this afternoon, Obama’s got to go, and the book of evidence is absolutely there. It’s comprehensive, it’s irrefutable. Some of the crimes that he is documented to be guilty of are crimes that go beyond simply the question of impeachment. They may wind up being the basis for criminal prosecution, because the immunity afforded to elected officials does not extend to outright criminal action.

So, we’ve got Wall Street, that’s a parasite sitting on top of and destroying the U.S. economy. There are straightforward measures that could be taken to eliminate Wall Street, starting with the idea of simply re-instating Glass-Steagall. There are many things that could be done. We could issue credit to rebuild our infrastructure. We could be adopting the model of Franklin Roosevelt from when he first came into office, setting up training programs for young people to give them the necessary skills and to also give them the sense of optimism that they’ve got a constructive role to play in society, and that they’ve got a bright future ahead of them.

All of these things could be done. They’re all right there. If you go to the LaRouche PAC website, you will see there’s a massive amount of material spelling out chapter and verse exactly what kinds of measures can and must be taken to turn this situation around. But ultimately it starts with a very subjective question: Are you prepared to fight for your own vital interests? Are you prepared to hold elected officials to a constitutional standard, and to hold them accountable if they fail to live up to it? These are the issues. These are the questions that are really right now staring us in the face, because we don’t have much time left. We don’t have a great deal of time to solve these problems, to tackle these issues, and the question is, are you prepared to give up your pragmatism, to turn off your television, and to do something constructive for your country, for your family, and for your future generations?

That’s really the issue and that’s the question that should be the burning issue on everybody’s mind at this moment.

MATT OGDEN: Now, our final question for this evening is our institutional question, which reads as follows: “Mr. LaRouche, the Russian-operated Airbus A321M crashed last Saturday shortly after taking off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, on its way to St. Petersburg, killing all 224 people on board. There are strong but unconfirmed reports that the plane had been downed by a bomb, a claim contested by both Egypt and Russia. British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, however, said that Britain had weighed the whole information picture, including the Islamic State’s claim of responsibility after the crash, and had concluded that there is a significant possibility. If these reports are substantiated through examination of the plane wreckage, what actions do you suggest the Russian government should take against the perpetrators of this tragic crime?

STEINBERG: First of all, I think the actions taken by the British Foreign Secretary were obnoxious and egregious. The British have no role whatsoever in this investigation. If they had communications intercepts suggesting that terrorists were planning such an attack, then the obvious question is why didn’t they inform the Egyptian and Russian authorities, if they knew this was happening? The fact of the matter is that the British basically staged an ambush for Egyptian President el-Sisi, because it was upon his arrival in London for a long-scheduled state visit that Hammond made these comments, and basically announced at the same time that British Airways was suspending flights into Egypt.

So, you’ve got a British game being played here, and an Obama game, because an unnamed Obama Administration official immediately came out and told Reuters that the U.S. is in agreement with the British in terms of jumping the gun, and drawing these hasty and perhaps completely false conclusions.

Now, what Mr. LaRouche said is, first of all, you’ve got to let the Russians conduct the investigation. The Russians are perfectly capable of conducting a thorough and honest and comprehensive forensic investigation to determine what happened. And because of the nature of the area where the crash occurred, namely, in the Sinai desert, all of the remains of the plane have been recovered. The black boxes have been recovered, with a little bit of damage to one of them. All of the bodies by and large have been recovered. And therefore, because you’re dealing with people who have competence, and who have a vested interest in finding out what really happened, Mr. LaRouche emphasized, let the Russians do their job. Don’t jam them. Don’t try to speed it up. Patiently wait for the investigation to be concluded.

And I should say that the head of the Russian FSB, their intelligence service, Alexander Bortnikov, issued a statement today. I’ll just read it—it’s brief—but it goes very much to the point that Mr. LaRouche just made. Bortnikov said, and it was publicized on Channel 1 TV in Russia today:

“We need to obtain absolutely objective and verified data on the reasons for the crash of the plane. This is necessary for purposes of investigating the cause of this disaster, and for informing the public. This work must be done in the most meticulous fashion, taking as much time as may be required, and I want to state that until we determine the actual causes of what happened, I think it is appropriate to halt Russian civil aviation flights to Egypt. This chiefly involves tourism. At the same time, we find it necessary to cooperate actively with the Egyptian authorities in joint work on the investigation of the causes of this disaster. Now, Russia 1 then quoted the official spokesman for President Putin, Mr. Peskov, who said the President concurred with Bortnikov’s recommendations; and he added “Halting the flights does not yet mean that the version that it was an act of terrorism is being viewed as the main one in the investigation of this air disaster. Experts continue to exclude nothing, including the possibility of a bomb explosion onboard the plane.” So, this is the beginnings of an investigation into a serious tragedy; 224 people were killed in it. And it’s not known yet; we don’t have the results of that forensic investigation.

Now as the question of what the Russians should do, I think the answer is, pretty obviously, that they’re already doing it. The Russians, as of September 30, are carrying out a systematic, targeted campaign against the terrorist networks that are operating inside Syria. They are, at the same time, aggressively pursuing a diplomatic track to try to bring an end to this 5-year horror inside Syria; and that will obviously have major implications for the situation next door in Iraq, in Lebanon, in other parts of the entire Middle East region. So, in effect, Putin already made a command decision and launched the flanking operation against the Islamic State and allied jihadist groups and their sponsors in countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. So, it would be a mistake to veer off what is already an extremely effective and ongoing flanking operation. If it turns out — and again, it’s premature to make any judgement on this — but if does turn out that the Islamic State or some affiliate or spin-off was involved in planting a bomb on that plane, then that’s another story; and you’ve got to carry it several steps further. What was the infrastructure through which that operation was conducted, if it proves to have been a bomb rather than a mechanical failure? Now, if you’re talking about the Islamic State, if you’re talking about Nusra, if you’re talking about al-Qaeda, then ultimately, face it; you’re talking about operations that were allowed to grow and allowed to fester as a result of the policies of the Bush and now Obama Presidencies, and the Blair and Cameron governments in Britain.

So, ultimately, all roads lead back to what we’ve been discussing throughout the entire evening broadcast tonight; namely, as the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency [dia], General Mike Flynn, told al-Jazeera, and has subsequently repeated in interviews with American and Russian media; the President, the administration were warned that the actions that the US was taking in places like Benghazi, was fueling the growth of jihadist organizations. And it was not an oversight, or that the warnings were ignored, as General Flynn said, it was in pursuit of the ongoing current policy that they made a willful decision to keep doing what they were doing, having been fully informed that this was fueling the growth of not just al-Qaeda. But back in 2012, DIA was already looking at the prospects of the creation of a jihadist caliphate in the area on the territory of parts of Iraq and Syria.

So, in other words, the head of the DIA has said openly and publicly President Obama willfully pursued a policy that created ISIS. So, let me ask you, if — and we’re not there yet by any means — but if it turns out that this was a bomb; if it turns out that the Islamic State was involved in it, then let’s go higher up the political and logistical chain of command. Are we not talking about the consequences of Bush and Obama administration policies and certainly the policies of the parallel British government? So, that’s another dimension of what I want you to think about this evening. And I hope that you’ve been disturbed enough by what we’ve discussed tonight that you’ll lose a bit of sleep and think about what’s required to end the tyranny of pragmatism. To end the tyranny of basically “go along to get along”; and what it will take to actually solve these crises before they bring the entire trans-Atlantic region down, or may ultimately lead to thermonuclear annihilation.

OGDEN: So, as I said at the outset of this broadcast, the evidence has continued to accumulate. The case against Obama has now begun to snowball; the avalanche is ready to begin. It is now incumbent on those who are in responsible positions of leadership to take the legal and Constitutional actions which must be taken to protect the American people and to protect the people of the entire world from the deadly consequences of the continuation of the policies of the Obama Presidency.

So with that said, we want to thank you for joining us here tonight. Please, stay tuned to larouchepac.com, and please circulate this video and the discussion that Mr. LaRouche continues to have with activists in Manhattan and with people across the entire nation in his weekly Fireside Chats, as widely as you possibly can.

Thank you for joining us, and good night.

3. november 2015 – Marcel Fratzscher, direktør for det Tyske Institut for Forskning i Økonomi (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, DIW) siger, at den tyske økonomi vil få gavn af at integrere flygtninge ind på arbejdsmarkedet inden for de næste fem til syv år. Med den rette integrationsstrategi vil de bidrage til national vækst og mere end kompensere for udgifterne til deres integration, sagde han, idet han polemiserede, at pengeargumentet ikke giver mening, for man kunne lige så godt erklære det at sørge for uddannelse og erhvervsmæssig træning af halvdelen af Tysklands unge for at være et økonomisk tab, hvilket omgående ville blive erkendt som totalt absurd. Der vil komme en økonomisk gevinst, selv, hvis man tager i betragtning, at produktiviteten af integrerede ikke-tyskere muligvis kun ligger på to tredjedele at den sædvanlige tyske arbejders.

5. november 2015 – Umiddelbart forud for dagens hastekrisemøde i Berlin om flygtningekrisen sagde ministerpræsident for Brandenburg, Dietmar Wiodke, at det, der var et presserende behov for, var at uddanne flygtninge til specialarbejdere/faglærte arbejdere på samme måde, som man gjorde det med østtyskere efter den tyske genforening: »Vi har behov for et program af samme art, som vi havde i Østtyskland for 20-25 år siden … Vi har brug for et program til opkvalificering af disse mennesker, der kommer til os, et beskæftigelsesprogram.«

Woidke, der er socialdemokrat, tilføjede, at »det ville give et stærkt signal, hvis vi begyndte at drøfte hovedudfordringerne i de kommende måneder og år, og det er integrationen af disse mennesker, og dette vil ikke løse sig selv på en nat.« Den finansiering, som forbundsregeringen har stillet til rådighed for 800.000 flygtninge, udgør 2 mia. euro, sagde Woidke, og med det totale, forventede antal flygtninge på 1 mio. mennesker eller flere ved årets udgang, må yderligere finansiering findes.

4. november 2015 – Den græske premierminister Alexis Tsipras og EU-parlamentets præsident Martin Schultz (Tyskland, SPD), holdt et to timer langt »produktivt og åbenhjertigt« møde, da Schulz var i Grækenland for at overvære overførslen af de første 30 flygtninge fra Grækenland til Luxembourg. Tsipras gjorde det klart, at, i den aktuelle flygtningekrise er den humanitære indsats, Grækenland præsterer, og som langt overstiger landets midler, samtidig med, at Grækenland skal imødekomme kravene fra kreditorerne, umulig og barbarisk.

»Vi må se de spørgsmål, der ligger ud over dette økonomiske barbari, og som falder inden for det etiske område. På et tidspunkt, hvor indbyggerne på de græske øer modtager bølgerne af flygtninge med åbne arme, er regeringen forpligtet til at hæve momsraten på øerne«, sagde han til pressekonferencen med Schultz i kølvandet på deres møde i premierministerens residens. »Hvis vi er tvunget til at tilbyde husly, selv kortvarigt, til flygtninge, så kan det ikke også være muligt for os at insistere på tvangsovertagelser af primære boliger i Grækenland«, sagde Tsipras. Sådanne krav er »uacceptable«, insisterede han og tilføjede, at den græske regering af europæere vil søge den samme solidaritet, som det kræves, at Grækenland udviser.

Spørgsmålene om tvangsovertagelser og forhøjelse af meromsætningsafgiften (moms) for øboerne har været blandt de mest presserende, økonomiske spørgsmål, som den græske befolkning er blevet konfronteret med, især taget i betragtning, at der alene i Athen er flere end 30.000 hjemløse mennesker.

»I løbet af de seneste måneder har vi båret byrden, men vi har den ære og stolthed, som grækerne udviser, især rundt det Ægæiske Hav, at redde ’Europas ære’«, sagde Tsipras.

Med en åbenlys henvisning til den tyske finansminister Wolfgang Schäuble og dennes kampagne for at sparke Grækenland ud af eurozonen, sagde Tsipras, at flygtningekrisen har vist, hvor tåbelige de mennesker er, der sidste sommer havde planer om den såkaldte Græxit; at fortsætte med sådanne planer ville ikke alene være »imbecilt«, men også »farligt«.

Tsipras sagde, at han og Schulz drøftede det bydende nødvendige behov for en fælles koordineringsstrategi og en fælles politik for at konfrontere den igangværende flygtningetragedie. Han meddelte også, at han, i anden halvdel af november, på vegne af EU vil rejse til Tyrkiet for at drøfte spørgsmålene mht. relationerne mellem EU og Tyrkiet om flygtningene med Ankara.

Schulz på sin side sagde, at Tsipras’ anmodninger var rimelige, og at han ville tage dem op i Bruxelles og under et topmøde, der finder sted på Malta den 12. nov. Han erklærede sig enig i, at det ikke er nok, at kun 8 af 28 EU-medlemsstater deltager i fordelingen af flygtninge.

»Som europæiske organisationer og som medlemsstater skylder vi at støtte flygtningekrisen på enhver måde«, sagde han. Men han fastholdt dog, at Grækenland må overholde memorandaet. Han kaldte spørgsmålene om moms og tvangsovertagelser (af hjem) for »symbolske« og sagde, at han ville formidle dette til institutionerne i et forsøg på at finde en løsning.

4. november 2015 – Den græske premierminister Alexis Tsipras overværede overførslen af de første 30 flygtninge fra Grækenland til Luxembourg og mindede europæerne om deres humanitære forpligtelser. Både Tsipras og EU-kommissær for migration, indenrigsanliggender og borgerskab, Dimitris Avramopoulos (Grækenland), fremkom med det argument, at flytning af flygtninge må blive systematisk, for, som den græske premier sagde, at give flygtningene »mulighed for at gøre deres drøm til virkelighed«.

»Tredive flygtninge i forhold til tusinder, der er flygtet fra deres hjem i Syrien og Irak, er en dråbe i havet«, sagde Tsipras. »Vi ønsker, at denne dråbe skal blive til en strøm, og sluttelig til en flod af humanisme, medansvarlighed og fælles ansvar, for dette er de principper, på hvilke Den europæiske Union blev grundlagt.

Vi glæder os over at se disse børn smile. Men samtidig har vi et stort ansvar for at sikre, at disse smil bliver til mange flere i de kommende måneder, og for at stoppe disse ofre i det Ægæiske Hav, der gør europæisk kultur til skamme. Det er vores fælles ansvar, og vi må arbejde hårdt for at gøre dette til virkelighed og stoppe dette drama.«

Han holdt sin tale foran et forstørret fotografi af tre ældre kvinder fra Mytilene på øen Lesbos, der madede et syrisk flygtninge-spædbarn, og roste gæstfriheden og den støtte, som det græske folk i disse dramatiske tider har udvist. »Dette foto viser Europas virkelige, gode ansigt, og det er det Europa, vi ønsker at leve i«, sagde Tsipras. »Ikke i et Europa, der bygger mure og rejser pigtrådshegn.«

Med en påmindelse til tilhørerne om, at også Grækenland lider under EU, erklærede han: »Så lad os ikke glemme, at Grækenland er et land, der selv befinder sig i en humanitær krise, for en meget stor del af befolkningen lever nu, pga. den politik, der har været ført i de senere år, i fattigdom, lever nu under meget svære betingelser. Men det græske folk har imidlertid åbnet sine arme til disse mennesker, og især har indbyggerne på øerne udstrakt en varm omfavnelse.« Han sagde, at flygtningene »takkede Grækenland og det græske folk, der, vel vidende, hvad det vil sige at være flygtning, har taget imod dem«.

Han fortsatte, »Hovedproblemet er krigen i Syrien – vi må forene vores indsats for at samarbejde om at stoppe krigen i Syrien og stoppe disse menneskers behov for at forlade deres hjem. Indtil da må vi se, hvordan vi bedst organiserer både disse menneskers gæstfrihed i værtslandene, og koordinerer omfordelingsprocessen, som begyndte i dag.«

Tsipras krævede, at man etablerer modtagelsescentre i Tyrkiet for at forhindre flygtningene i at tage den farlige tur over havet.

Seks familier fra Syrien og Irak blev omfordelt under en toårig plan, som EU finansierer med 780 millioner euro. Flere end 580.000 flygtninge er kommet ind i Grækenland hidtil i år. Fra årets begyndelse og frem til 29. okt. var mindst 435 mennesker døde, inkl. mange børn, under den farlige overfart fra Tyrkiet og til de græske øer. Denne fare kunne undgås, hvis flygtningene blev registreret og kom ind i en legal omfordelingsplan fra selve Tyrkiet, sagde Tsipras.

Videoen har engelsk voice-over.

3. november 2015 – Syriske og palæstinensiske flygtninge, der er landet på Cypern på den britiske Dhekelia-flyvebase, en af Hendes Majestæts Forenede Kongeriges to »uafhængige base-områder«, holdes tilsyneladende under koncentrationslejr-forhold. De 114 flygtninge, der landede på øen i sidste måned, er spærret inde i en teltlejr på basens jord. En flygtning forsøgte at begå selvmord, iflg. en video- og audiooptagelse, som The Guardian har fået.

En optagelse viser et barn, der beder: »Jeg er 12 år gammel. Vi sidder her i teltene, og vi fryser, og vi må ikke forlade teltene … Hjælp os.«

Nogle af flygtningene har i protest sat ild til nogle af teltene.

FN har sagt, at flygtningene skal etableres i Storbritannien, alt imens Hendes Majestæts Forsvarsministerium siger, det »ikke vil tillade, at der åbnes for en ny migrantrute til Storbritannien«.

I en anden video ses en stor gruppe protestere ved et højt pigtrådshegn – med en mand, der sidder på toppen og synger: »Lad os gå«. En anden høres råbe: »Vi er mennesker, ikke dyr«, idet en politibetjent forsøger at berolige ham.

Takis Neophytou, gen. dir. for Cyperns Røde Kors-selskab, afviste at kommentere rapporterne efter et kort besøg på basen den 2. nov. Han erkendte imidlertid, at de, der var kommet i sidste måned, var »meget frustrerede«.

Ifølge en aftale mellem Storbritannien og Cypern er asylansøgere, der ankommer direkte til den britiske base, Storbritanniens ansvar, og at cypriotiske tjenesteydelser skal betales af Storbrritannien.

Briterne er ekstremt modbydelige i dette spørgsmål – og de anfører Europa i at behandle flygtningene som dyr (hvilket er en naturlig sag for Det britiske Imperium). En gruppe på 67 irakiske flygtninge landede på basen i 1998, og de bor stadig i telte på basen! Vi taler ikke om de 500.000, der er landet i Grækenland, men om færre end 200 mennesker.

Foto: I frustration har flygtninge sat ild til nogle telte i flygtningelejren på den britiske Cypern-base Dhekelia

3. november 2015 – Borgmesteren for den græske ø Lesbos, Spiros Galinos, sagde i går til Grækenlands Vima FM-radio, at hans ø var løbet tør for plads til at begrave det voksende antal mennesker, der dør under forsøget på at komme over Middelhavet for at nå frem til Europa. »I går holdt vi fem begravelser, men der er stadig 55 lig i lighuset«, sagde han. »Hvem kunne have forudset et sådant blodbad i det Ægæiske Hav?«

Lesbos er blot et mikro-kosmos i den eksistentielle krise, der fejer over Europa i dag. FN’s Flygtningekommissariat, UNHCR, rapporterede i går, at 218.394 migranter og flygtninge var kommet ind i Europa via havet i oktober måned, mere end det totale antal i hele 2014. UNHCR’s skøn for ankomster til Europa i år på 700.000 er allerede overskredet; det totale antal ankomster frem til i dag for 2015 er allerede nået op på 744.000.

Nogle i Europa har forsøgt at standse indstrømningen af flygtninge til, og endda igennem, deres lande, med barberbladsskarpe pigtrådshegn og militariserede grænser. Andre, som den tyske kansler Angela Merkel, der har afvist en sådan politik som værende af en sådan art, at den kunne føre til krige blandt Europas nationer, kæmper hårdt for at fastholde en human fremgangsmåde. For eksempel har Kroatiens indenrigsminister Ranko Ostajic, der har set flere end 300.000 migranter gå igennem sit land siden medio september, fordømt ideen om, at dette kunne løses gennem en militarisering: »Tror I virkelig, I kan standse disse mennesker uden at skyde? Man måtte bygge en mur omkring Europa, hvis man virkelig ville stoppe denne form for strøm.«

Den eneste, faktiske, alternative politik til barberblads-pigtråd og nedskydning af folk på grænserne, er at stoppe Obamas morderiske krige i regionen og i stedet bringe reel udvikling til dem, ved at forlænge Den nye Silkevej ind i Mellemøsten og Afrika.

Foto: De klarede den til Lesbos

3. november 2015– Under et angiveligt turbulent CDU-møde i Darmstadt, hvor kansler Angela Merkel mødte stærk kritik af sin flygtningepolitik, advarede hun i sin 30 min. lange hovedtale mod at opføre pigtrådshegn og udstationere bevæbnede styrker imod indstrømningen af flygtninge langs grænserne, som f.eks. mellem Ungarn og Serbien. Hun sagde, at dette allerede nu fremprovokerede spændinger mellem lande dér, og at det endda kunne føre til væbnet konflikt – krige på Balkan, som i 1990’erne.

Ungarn har bekostet tre gange så meget på hegnet end på hjælp til flygtninge. Og hvis flygtninge ikke længere kan komme ind i ungarsk territorium, finder de alligevel andre ruter. Indstrømningen af flygtninge til Tyskland vil blive dæmpet noget, men vil ikke stoppe. Merkel opfordrede til afholdelse af en haste-krisekonference mellem Balkanlandene for at håndtere udfordringerne på en human måde.

De store, tyske medier forfølger i mellemtiden et »Merkel-gate« for fuld udblæsning: alt imens weekendens udgave af Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung anklagede Merkel for at ofre de kristne, europæiske værdier til fordel for de islamiske indtrængende, der bestormer Europa i form af flygtninge, så har Schweiz’ finansavis Neue Zürcher Zeitung en helsides artikel i dag, skrevet af tidligere mangeårige chefredaktør for Bildzeitung Hans-Hermann Tiedje med overskriften »Merkeldämmerung« (Merkel-dæmringen«), der siger, at Merkels politiske ende alligevel vil komme – hvad enten hun indrømmer, at flygtningepolitikken var en fejltagelse eller ej. Desuden bemærkede Hesse-Tv, med en rapport om Merkels optræden i Darmstadt i går, at hun var ret afslappet, til trods for, at hun nu har det meste af sit eget parti imod sig, og hendes egen finansminister Wolfgang Schäuble står i døren, parat til at overtage. Også vidt rapporteret i medierne: FDP-politiker Florian Rentsch kræver en national folkeafstemning om flygtningespørgsmålet, som han er overbevist om vil gå imod Merkel.

2. november 2015 – Ralph Stegner og Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel, der begge er viceformænd i SPD, har her til morgen igen udtalt sig offentligt og krævet, at politikken for en budgetbalance (det »sorte nul« eller »gældsbremsen«) blev modificeret for at give mulighed for ekstra finansiering af projekter til genhusning, støtte og integration af flygtninge.

Schäfer-Gümbel sagde, at man ikke burde anskue delstaten Hesses politik med en »gældsbremse« som naturlig lov; det er snarere en metode til regulering, der kan og bør modificeres under særlige omstændigheder – med flygtningekrisen som en sådan situation; og Hesse har et akut behov for, at der opføres 40.000 nye lejligheder, både til lavindkomstgrupper og til flygtninge.

Deres tal er under alle omstændigheder for lave: Byen Wiesbaden alene, der engang havde 25.000 sådanne sociale boligenheder, er nu nede på 9.000 og løber en stor fare for i år 2030 at lande på nul, med de nuværende planlagte 7.000 nye boligenheder (der ikke medregner flygtningenes behov), som ikke gør den store forskel. Med hensyn til nye boliger, der skal bygges til flygtninge, der vil blive i Tyskland og har ret til primær familiesammenføring (hustruer og børn), så findes der endnu ikke noget »forceret program«, selv om det nu om stunder ofte kaldes sådan. De nye lejligheder, som flygtninge flytter ind i nu, er for det meste dem, der blev påbegyndt meget tidligere på året, før den voldsomme indstrømning af flygtninge begyndte i juli måned. Det indebærer, at lejligheder, der bebudes til flygtninge nu, sandsynligvis ikke vil være disponible før sent næste sommer eller efterår.

Mange flygtninge, både de 42.000, der stadig må bo i telte, og dem, der endnu vil komme, må flyttes til vintersikrede opholdssteder, såsom hærens ombyggede barakker, der ikke længere er i brug.

Dette kan Tyskland klare; men de nye forholdsregler, som regeringen har diskuteret, og som har til formål at dæmpe flygtningestrømmen, indebærer, at for de ti tusinder, der stadig vandrer på vejene i Balkan, hvor vintervejrlig allerede er sat ind, og hvor det voldsommere regnvejr har forvandlet flygtninge-teltlejre til mudderbanker, vil overlevelse blive meget svær.

Det er dette drama, som 200 private hjælpeorganisationer har adresseret i deres åbne brev til EU-ledere for en uge siden. Men nogle af dem har fortalt denne nyhedstjeneste, at der hidtil ikke er kommet et eneste officielt svar fra EU-regeringer eller EU-institutioner.