Close Attention to LaRouche in Russia

Aug. 9 (EIRNS)—The "Transatlantic Call for Urgent Measures to End the Global Breakdown Crisis" issued by Lyndon LaRouche, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and Jacques Cheminade on Aug. 8, was publicized in Russian the next day. Posted on the Russian-language website of the LaRouche movement, the Transatlantic Call quickly rocketed around the Russian section of the Internet. It was republished by Natalia Vitrenko's Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, among others.

In the Russian economics blog called Aftershock, user Alexsword posted the LaRouche call on Aug. 9 as an update to his own posting from a few hours earlier, titled "LaRouche says the world financial system has collapsed!" That posting leads with two or three paragraphs from LaRouche's speech at the Russian State Duma in 1995, followed by Alexsword's commentary that what LaRouche said then, is what has happened now. He wrote that a few hours earlier, LaRouche had issued this appeal for emergency action, and he summarized it. Upon receiving the full translation, he added that in full under a subhead, as a hot-off-the-press translation directly from the LaRouche movement.

The Aftershock posting was one of the 10 most viewed blog postings in the Russian-language section of Live Journal for the day, with 20,000 views, 4,000 readers, and 300 comments, as well as scores of other sites linking to the post.

Russians Discuss Earthquake Warning Satellite System

Aug. 10 (EIRNS)—Sergei Zhukov, general director of the new Skolkovo Innovation Center near Moscow, spoke of an "interesting proposal" among the projects the center envisages: "One of a satellite system that recognizes earthquakes at an early stage. It has been found out that the activity of the Earth's crust produces some changes in the ionosphere. This will be a system of two satellites, a 200-kilo and a 50-kilo one, that will fly one after another, receive information from the ionosphere, and transmit it to Earth. This project gives great prospects for both scientific research and for commercial needs. In particular, we hope that insurance companies will be interested in receiving information from these satellites."

The Skolkovo Center is not yet open, although its Open University began its activities in April 2011.

Russia Plans New Science City, While Obama Shows He's Bats

Aug. 11 (EIRNS)—During a visit today to Russia's Far East, Russian Federal Space Agency head Vladimir Popovkin reaffirmed that the government is ready to start construction of the Vostochny Cosmodrome this month. The construction, over the next five years, is budgeted at about $8.4 billion. Unlike Cape Canaveral, Kazakhstan's Baikonur, or any of the other world launch complexes, Vostochny will be a new science city, with research centers, an academy for young scientists, an astronaut training center, and space manufacturing facilities. It is estimated that about 30,000 workers will be involved in creating the facilities.

The LaRouche movement's Schiller Institute conference in Kiedrich in 2007, "The Eurasian Land-Bridge Becomes a Reality," featured a presentation on the future Cosmodrome Vostochny, which was then just an idea to transform the small military Cosmodrome Svobodny, which was being mothballed at the time. Leaders of the Institute for Demography, Migration, and Regional Development, one of the key groups that pushed for the Far East cosmodrome idea, outlined it as a "Space Industry Cluster in Russia's Amur Region." Explicitly incorporating the LaRouche Land-Bridge concept of corridors of dense development, the draft plan included a productive high-tech industry corridor from Uglegorsk (the town near the cosmodrome) to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, the terminus of the Baikal-Amur Mainline railroad; it would be key to repopulating Siberia and the Russian Far East.

The top-level decision to go ahead with Cosmodrome Vostochny was taken by then-President Vladimir Putin, who has continued to push the project as Prime Minister, in the face of budget-cutting pressures during the past three years.

While the Roscosmos head was outlining the ambitious plans for the Russian space program, Barack Obama was visiting yet another battery manufacturing plant, bragging that 150 (!) green jobs, in Depression-wracked Michigan, had been created there. And Obama's space program? Yesterday, the crew of the final Space Shuttle flight visited the plant near New Orleans that, for 30 years, has hand-crafted each large orange fuel tank that was needed on every Shuttle launch. The crew decided to move up their trip so it would occur before this month's round of layoffs. At its high point, more than 5,500 very highly skilled technicians worked at the Michoud plant.