Executive Intelligence Review, Volume 46, Number 14, April 12, 2019

- Cover

- Masthead

- EDITORIAL Commence the Era of LaRouche! The NASA Mission in Context by Michael G. Steger

- PDF edition Table of Contents — Volume 46, Number 14, April 12, 2019

- I. The Cultural Question

- Adventure of a Young Traveler

- What Are the Children Telling Us? by Robert Ingraham

- The Jesuits Charge that LaRouche Is ‘An Agent of the Vatican’ by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

- II. Physical Economy

- LAROUCHE PAC WEBCAST Lunar Settlement ‘Before Decade Is Out’ Trump Channels Kennedy, LaRouche

- What Is America’s National Credit? Can We Use It for Real Economic Growth? Review by Paul Gallagher PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES.

- NUCLEAR ENERGY Recognition of Small Modular Reactors’ Role in the Coming World Is Increasing, But Is that Enough? by Ramtanu Maitra

- III. Expose the British Subversion

- ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST New Paradigm Requires Full Exposure of Russiagate’s ‘British Character’

- EDITORIAL Trump on a Peace Offensive; the British Fight Back by Harley Schlanger

- Prominent Persons Call To Exonerate Lyndon LaRouche

Expose the British Subversion

Editor-in-Chief and Founder:

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Editorial Board: Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. , Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Robert Ingraham, Tony Papert, Gerald Rose, Dennis Small, William Wertz

Co-Editors: Robert Ingraham, Tony Papert

Technology: Marsha Freeman

Transcriptions: Katherine Notley

Ebooks: Richard Burden

Graphics: Alan Yue

Photos: Stuart Lewis

Circulation Manager: Stanley Ezrol

INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORS

Economics: Marcia Merry Baker, Paul Gallagher

History: Anton Chaitkin

Ibero-America: Dennis Small

United States: Debra Freeman

INTERNATIONAL BUREAUS

Berlin: Rainer Apel

Copenhagen: Tom Gillesberg

Lima: Sara Madueño

Melbourne: Robert Barwick

Mexico City: Gerardo Castilleja Chávez

New Delhi: Ramtanu Maitra

Paris: Christine Bierre

Stockholm: Ulf Sandmark

United Nations, N.Y.C.: Leni Rubinstein

Washington, D.C.: William Jones

Wiesbaden: Göran Haglund

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EDITORIAL

Commence the Era of LaRouche!

The NASA Mission in Context

by Michael G. Steger

April 7—On Monday, April 1, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine made clear that President Trump’s declaration of his space policy one week prior—a declaration issued literally just days after the conclusion of the attempted Trump legal assassination by Robert Mueller—was not simply another paper proposal.

That declaration—which began, “This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprint, we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars and perhaps, someday, to many worlds beyond”—was fine in itself, but similar to many proposals which have remained on paper; it was not yet “on the ground.”

Yet, Bridenstine’s presentation, to a rare, publicized town hall with top leaders of NASA’s main directorates, for all of NASA and the world to see, made clear that Trump’s program is not a “paper policy,” but a tangible change in U.S. economic policy. Bridenstine’s entire presentation can be watched on YouTube. The basics are clear:

1. President Trump has moved up the time frame for a manned Moon landing from ten years to five, meaning that it will happen before the end of his second term. Bridenstine said repeatedly that the President has taken personal responsibility to make this happen during his Presidency. It was also clear that Bridenstine is putting his own career and credibility on the line. Two or three times he said he had heard the Lucy and Charlie Brown football story more than a hundred times since arriving at NASA (the ball is pulled from beneath NASA like a sadistic joke, or the policy objective is changed from the Moon to Mars to an Asteroid, creating institutional whiplash), and so he said definitively: “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for all of us. These are the moments, if—no, when—we succeed, that we will tell our grandchildren about. The President is committed to this.”

2. The President has insisted that we will go to the Moon with the intent of developing and using lunar resources, and we will plan for a sustained human presence, and a future launch from the Moon to Mars. This is the Krafft Ehricke-Lyndon LaRouche policy without compromise. He made it clear we are going to the South Pole of the Moon, specifically for the water-ice resources—for use in water, oxygen, and rocket fuel potential.

3. The President has insisted that we will go to the Moon with international partners. Though left unsaid, the leading partner in manned-space exploration today is Russia, and China is the leader in current lunar exploration.

4. The President has insisted that we will put men again on the Moon, and we will put the first woman on the Moon. This is the right kind of #MeToo moment, and is an echo of the 1988 LaRouche nationally televised broadcast. “Woman on Mars.” There is now a new, fourth, Directorate at NASA. In addition to the directorates of the Aeronautics Research Mission, the Human Exploration & Operations Mission, and the Science Mission, there is now a Moon-Mars Directorate—an entire branch of NASA dedicated to developing and implementing this approach for the coming generations.

Current Thinking on the Approach

Besides emphasizing these points throughout the discussion, Bridenstine had a clarity and passion uncharacteristic of what one might expect. He presented a knowledge of various rocketry problems, using his experience as a top gun Navy pilot, to provide a working sense of the physical issues. Perhaps most importantly for various skeptics, he presented in detail the current approach to the national space program’s frontier project.

The SLS, or Space Launch System, which is a derivation of the Obama-cancelled Constellation Program’s Ares rocket and the most powerful rocket ever designed, will be the primary system the U.S.A. uses to begin the colonization of the Moon. To circumvent the delays which have occurred, Bridenstine detailed how the development process has been changed to a “crash program” of horizontal production, so that multiple steps of SLS rocket development can now be done simultaneously, rather than the time consuming vertical, bottom-up process.

Gateway to the Moon and Mars

Bridenstine then detailed some aspects of the Gateway project, much of which is still to be determined. In the LaRouche PAC’s April 5th webcast, Kesha Rogers discussed some of these aspects. Gateway, as currently conceived, will be a port in Cislunar orbit.

What it will eventually become is still under discussion, as is much of the process, except for the SLS rocket system and the Orion manned craft. The Gateway could evolve into a Cislunar space station. It may be entirely unnecessary for the moment.

Bridenstine presented the current idea, which is to develop a Gateway orbital docking port, where Orion, carrying four astronauts, will dock. From there, a pre-stationed descent craft—deployed and rendezvoused prior to the astronauts’ arrival—will be used to approach the lunar surface. Then a landing craft will be deployed, part of which will also be used to lift off from the Moon and return to the Gateway port.

None of these crafts have been finalized, yet all of it inspires the imagination. What’s the best approach? It’s not yet clear, but it is all damn exciting, and a great way to “get those damn plants open now” as President Trump recently said in a large campaign rally March 28 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The whole project—and Bridenstine himself—pulses with an energy and a clear sense of mission long unseen in this nation. It will require new ideas, will need to be constantly revised and updated as the process evolves, and will require the best of our nation’s scientists, engineers, and industry. It also requires the commitment of the American people, of whom 99% are kept in the dark by the fascist Fake News media, media which may be willing to cover aspects of the British role in the coup against our nation, but will never, ever, raise the specter of a mission of scientific optimism, exploration and development in their mainstream coverage.

This is our mission. As Lyndon LaRouche said in 1985, “For a period of perhaps the next twenty years, let us write ‘Moon-Mars-colonization mission-assignment’ wherever present custom would have us write the words ‘science’ and ‘technological progress’.”

Trump: End the Danger of Nuclear War

Just three days after Bridenstine held this unprecedented town hall meeting, President Trump presented his strategic view of the coming period while in a press conference in the Oval Office. Sitting next to Special Envoy Liu He of China, President Trump responded to a question on the potential benefits of the expected new trade deal between the United States and China, once again going off topic, saying “this may be going one step ahead,” but stage two, after this current deal is signed—which may happen before the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing, or soon after—we should get together with Russia and China, end the dangers of nuclear war, and create a sustainable peace. He said this, literally as NATO leaders met in D.C. to spit fire and fury at Russia and China.

If one reads between the lines of such statements (if not the statement itself!) then the question of a LaRouche paradigm of a shared space exploration and colonization initiative, combined with global infrastructure platforms and development (Global BRI, World Land-Bridge), and a four-powers strategic alignment against the British Empire is seen to be more alive today than ever before.

During these last two weeks, since the Mueller assassination passed its last gas, we have seen President Trump first demand that the industrial plants of our nation open immediately; then launch the most extensive scientific mission of space exploration ever seen, and on an accelerated schedule; and finally, propose that once the largest trade deal ever created is signed by the United States and China, that we immediately move to use the trade deal as a platform for higher strategic discussions between the United States, Russia, and China, on ending nuclear war permanently, and creating lasting peace. Simply breathtaking!

This is not a fait accompli, as we are all aware that such viewpoints are not shared by leading policymakers and advisers. Yet, if we want it, it’s there for us to take. Or as they say in Texas, “Come and take it!” We must mobilize the American people as never before. The next 500 years of the LaRouche-era are within our grasp.

EIR Contents

www.larouchepub.com — Volume 46, Number 14, April 12, 2019

Cover This Week

CC/ Jim Bowen

MI6 headquarters, London

---------------------------------------------

EXPOSE THE BRITISH SUBVERSION

2 EDITORIAL

Commence the Era of LaRouche!

The NASA Mission in Context

by Michael G. Steger

I. THE CULTURAL QUESTION

5 Adventure of a Young Traveler

15 What Are the Children Telling Us?

by Robert Ingraham

21 The Jesuits Charge that LaRouche Is

‘An Agent of the Vatican’

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

November 17, 1981

II. PHYSICAL ECONOMY

31 LAROUCHE PAC WEBCAST

Lunar Settlement ‘Before Decade Is Out’

Trump Channels Kennedy, LaRouche

42 What Is America’s National Credit?

Can We Use It for Real Economic Growth?

Review by Paul Gallagher

47 NUCLEAR ENERGY

Recognition of Small Modular Reactors’ Role in the Coming World Is Increasing, But Is that Enough?

by Ramtanu Maitra

III. EXPOSE THE BRITISH SUBVERSION

52 ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST

New Paradigm Requires Full Exposure of Russiagate’s ‘British Character’

58 EDITORIAL

Trump on a Peace Offensive; the British Fight Back

by Harley Schlanger

61 Prominent Persons Call for LaRouche’s Exoneration

I. The Cultural Question

Adventure of a Young Traveler

At first there was only a gray mist. Slowly it faded. I felt my hands reaching involuntarily to my eyes, rubbing them in circular patterns, and with a slight effort I shook my head side to side. I forced my eyes to fully open. Turning my gaze first in one direction, and then another, I observed that I was in a scene with which I was completely unfamiliar.

I was lying supine, in a small clearing. Trees, bushes and grasses surrounded me on all sides. At my feet a creek burbled along, the water making small whitecaps on the rocks as it flowed past. Sounds came from the tree branches, and, the sky above was unusually brilliant. Presently, I arose and began to examine my environment more closely. There were no clues as to my actual location, nor how I had arrived there. My memory proved useless as to the chain of events leading up to my present quandary, and as I strove to recall how I had come into this situation, I discovered, to my astonishment, that I could not remember a single thing about my life prior to that moment.

Was I suffering from some strange malady? Had I perhaps struck my head in such a way as to leave me so adrift? I examined my skull, running fingers through my hair and along the back of my neck, searching for some wound which would explain the mental affliction. Nothing—no bumps, bruises or tender spots were to be found. I was compelled to recognize that I possessed no memory of how I had arrived at my present location, nor any clue as to where or what that location might be.

I Acquire a Guide

A few moments passed, or perhaps it was much longer. I became aware of scuffling and thrashing sounds, first faint and then louder, approaching from my left side. I turned in that direction, and shortly a figure emerged from the bushes. The appearance of the creature was quite startling, and it was only after a sustained visual examination that I ascertained my visitor was, in fact, a human being. He—for with the bare chest and unkempt beard it seemed clear this was a person of the male gender—was nearly naked, with only some woven garment covering him from hips to knees. His hair was long, disheveled and knotted. His skin was a deep copper color, apparently from long exposure to the sun. The source of my confusion in recognizing him as a fellow human, however, was that strapped to his back was a long sheet of what appeared to be a glass-like substance, which extended from above his head almost down to his ankles. Attached to the sheet was a wire that ran down his arm to a cumbersome device wrapped around his wrist, and from his head several spokes of an indeterminate material stood out at all angles from his skull.

The weight of the contraption must have been significant because as he walked he was bent forward at almost a forty-five degree angle. At first he did not see me, but as chance would have it, he glanced up, spied me and halted. I cried out a greeting but received no reply. Venturing a few steps, I approached him and declared again, “Hello.” Something in his manner caused me to halt, so we stood, only feet apart, examining one another. “Who are you?” he asked, and I was greatly relieved to find that he addressed me in my native language.

Despite the extraordinary queerness of his appearance, the creature seemed to be well-meaning, so I proceeded to give a complete account of my present plight, and it was at this moment that I realized I could not even recall my name. That I knew not who I was, where I was, or how I had arrived there I fully confessed to this stranger.

“Yes, it was clear to me, from your ancient garments that you could not be from here,” he stated.

“But what is this place? Where are we?” I asked.

“Why, there is only one place, Gaia. Where else would we be?” He seemed astonished by my question.

“Gaia? I am not familiar with that name. What sort of place is this?”

“What sort? This is the blessed vessel we all share—and give thanks for.”

The nonsensical nature of his replies was exasperating and failed completely to shed light on my current predicament. I tried a different tack. “Is there a city or a town nearby?” I asked.

“A city? No, there are no cities here, but I am on my way to the Village. Would you like to accompany me?”

I immediately agreed to this suggestion. With no further words passing between us, my new acquaintance turned around, which took some effort with the burden he was bearing, and abruptly set off. I followed behind.

We Begin Our Journey

We proceeded down a narrow dirt path. Our route seemed to wind around, changing direction several times. My companion moved along at a brisk pace, despite his burden. Since he preceded me, this provided an opportunity to examine the glass-like device more closely, but the nature of its purpose completely eluded me. We continued in this manner for some time.

I began to notice that along both sides of the path there appeared to be some sort of fence, although to term it so is certainly an exaggeration, since it was very flimsy, and in places no more than a few sticks laid across one another. I enquired, “Friend, what is the purpose of these twigs and branches bordering the path?” He answered, “Those define Gaia’s limits for our kind. We must keep within the boundaries they set, for on the other side are to be found nature’s creatures, living in their free state, and it is dangerous to mix with them.” “But surely,” I protested, “such meager borders will not protect us from wild creatures.” “You misunderstand,” he exclaimed, “Tis not to protect us from them, but to protect them from us. For it is written that our kind is the greatest enemy of Gaia and all her creatures. Truly, you must have traveled from some very remote place to not know something as important as this.”

As we continued on our journey, I continued to question him, and I learned that many years ago fences had been erected in selected locations to protect wildlife from human intervention, and that over the course of generations the territory within these fenced off areas had been expanded many times over, with the areas for human habitation shrinking accordingly. My companion estimated that humans were now confined to a tiny sliver of the total land area, while wild creatures roamed in complete freedom. Apparently, to cross one of the barriers, which could have been physically accomplished with great ease, was strictly forbidden, and anyone found to have done so was severely punished.

As we continued on our way, I noticed that several paths crossed the one we were on, and at each of these intersections a sign was erected. These were crudely made, but each one bore the same exact inscription: Learn from our Fellow Creatures.

All of these things were, needless to say, extraordinarily strange to me, bordering on the bizarre. I hoped that some explanation might be provided by the inhabitants of the Village.

We Enter the Village

Arriving at the top of a low hill, I viewed in the dale below a settlement, with buildings spreading out in all directions.

“This is Ehrlick,” my guide announced.

The path wound down the hill, and we soon found ourselves at the first structures. As we approached, I became aware of a great irritation to my nasal passages, and now, standing at the entrance to the village, the odors which assaulted my senses were unbearably noxious.

“What is this stench?” I proclaimed.

“Why, this is Ehrlick,” he answered. “It is the preserve for our species.”

We proceeded into the settlement, and all the while it took strenuous effort on my part to keep from gagging. Upon further prodding of my host, I learned that under the guiding—apparently sacred—maxim of “Learn from our fellow creatures,” it had been decided long ago that just as creatures in the wild defecated, urinated and copulated wherever they chose, that all humans must emulate this behavior. Not only was there no shame attached to performing these functions in public, rather it was considered aberrant if anyone selected privacy for such acts. Although my stay in the village was brief in duration, I was to witness all of these actions many times, sometimes only feet away from where I was standing.

I also learned that a second contributing factor to the overpowering odor was the great scarcity of water. It was carefully rationed, with barely enough for drinking requirements. Regular cleansing of the body or ones garments was not only an impossibility, but, again, would have been considered a violation of the command to “Learn from our fellow creatures.”

I noted that even within the village, the existence of fences persisted. All of the buildings were connected by very narrow fenced-in pathways. My host informed me that every effort had been made to minimize the land use of the human population. Toward that end, regular measurements were carried out as to the widths of the paths, which were progressively made narrower and narrower, to the point now that two people walking in opposite directions had great difficulty in passing one another. He stated that there was now a proposition, put before the Guardians, to narrow the paths further to the width of one person, since it is possible for individuals traveling in opposite directions to hop over one another.

Further Wonders

As we proceeded, other individuals came into sight, although their numbers were not large. Many of them carried the same massive contraption as my companion, but not all. On one pathway, at some distance from where we stood, I spied what I at first thought was a procession of some ungainly four-legged creatures, with mammoth protuberances growing from their backs. They resembled nothing so much as exceedingly ugly and disproportional dromedaries. These creatures were plodding along, heaving from side to side as they placed one, and then another leg forward, each effort accompanied by a grunt so loud it carried even to where we stood.

“What sort of animals are those?” I enquired.

“Those are ones who cannot obtain a unit such as I carry, so they are compelled to use the more primitive units.”

At first, the meaning of his answer was unclear, but as we approached closer, a more careful examination of this grotesque caravan, revealed that these were in fact people, moving forward on hands and knees, supporting huge contraptions, sticking up ten feet or more into the air. Upon further scrutiny, I was amazed to discover that the burdens they carried were none other than small windmills, and I was incredulous not only to make this identification, but also that each person was able to support such a weight.

We continued our route along the path, and shortly we came to a small clearing. Determined to discover the meaning of that which I had observed, I asked my, now apparent, friend to explain.

“The unit you see me carrying,” he said, pointing to the long rectangular flat object on his back, “is my Power Unit. It collects rays from the Holy Sun and is able to convert them to power the Honker which you see strapped to my wrist. The spokes you see protruding from my headgear are the means through which my Honks are communicated to the Guardians.”

“So that which is on your wrist is a communication device?”

He nodded, “Yes, there are buttons which I can press which will convey my Honks.”

“What are these Honks that you speak of?”

“Why, they are how we decide. Everything is decided by the Will of the Honks.”

Only a very small part of this, of course, was intelligible to me, so I asked him about the poor souls who carried windmills.

“These are ones who could not obtain a Power Unit such as mine. They are forced to rely on the primitive Units, which use the power of the Holy Wind to operate their Honkers.”

“And what of those I saw with no device, I mean, no power unit?”

Here his appearance turned a little melancholic, and he replied, “The truth is we lost the talent to make these Units long ago, and as they cease to function, we have not enough for everyone.” He paused, and added, “This has become a source of woe, for now, without personal power, many of our people cannot participate in the Honkings.”

At my urging, my friend proceeded to tell me more. Apparently, many years ago a decision was made to eliminate all centralized power production, as being a “crime against Gaia.” He stated—with a touch of pride—that this decision was the result of “one of the first Great Honks.” It seems that all of the power plants, hydroelectric facilities, generating stations and power lines had been destroyed, or so I surmised from his vague descriptions. At first, individual villages and towns had produced their own power, but then, after another Honk, this practice, also, was done away with, and individuals were left to their own initiatives to procure “personal power.”

My companion went beyond the subject of power, to describe how other components of what I had previously considered to be modern civilization, had been eradicated. All of the “river obstacles”—by this I was fairly certain he meant dams—were demolished, so as to give “freedom to the fish.” All forms of powered transportation were halted, since these operations contributed to poisoning the Holy Air and the Holy Soil. At first the use of animals was allowed to transport humans and cargo, but this was later abolished as part of the “Creature Liberation Honk,” after which humans were prohibited from interfering with animals in any way.

We resumed our journey and continued along the path, but we encountered very few people and spoke to no one. Subsequently, I was to learn that this was not unusual, and that almost all human interaction was reserved for the Gathering, which I was informed we would join later in the day. First, however, my friend wanted to present me to several of the Village’s leaders.

I Meet the Wise Ones

We arrived before a large building which bore on its front door a faded, but clearly recognizable representation of the Sun. “This is the home of the Wise Ones,” my guide informed me. “It is best we stop here first for an audience.”

Before proceeding with what was to transpire within that building, however, let me first describe what I had so far observed as to the nature of the Village itself.

There were many buildings of various sizes and shapes, which extended out as far as I could see. All of them were old and decrepit in appearance. None of the dwellings possessed yards, as the only means of access were the narrow paths leading up to the entrances. The rest of the land was given over to a disorderly growth of wild vegetation, bushes, vines, trees and the like.

Many of the structures could not legitimately be characterized even as buildings. There were a variety of misshapen lean-tos, tents, tee-pees, primitive stone structures, and even dwellings that had been dug into the ground, covered only with branches and leaves. No observable pattern could be ascertained as to how any of this had been arranged.

There was no appearance of commerce of any kind, nor any stores, schools or libraries. I witnessed no social interaction among the few inhabitants I spied—simply solitary meanderings from one building to another. Some of these were women, attired like my companion only in a rough-hewn skirt, their bosoms fully exposed and deeply tanned like the rest of their bodies. At intervals I observed several individuals performing the full gamut of bodily functions, which I have already mentioned.

At the building of the Wise Ones, my companion simply opened the front door and ushered me in. I found myself in a very large, almost cavernous room. Here, the malodor of the village was even more pronounced. On one wall was a huge portrait of a man, attired in what appeared to be a monk’s outfit, with the inscription, Palsarpee.

Small groups of individuals were to be seen huddled here and there, most squatting on the floor, although a few were occupying benches. I noted that none of the inhabitants were encumbered with the burden my companion wore on his back, and he informed me that the work of the Wise Ones, as well as the Guardians was so sacred, that Power Units had been installed on the roofs of their buildings.

One of the inhabitants approached, in all appearances a quite elderly male, although the unkempt and unwashed habit among them, made such a judgment little more than a guess. My companion addressed him, saying that I was a visitor from a far off place, ignorant of the ways of Ehrlick, and that I wished to learn more.

As with my companion, no names were requested or exchanged. This Wise One asked no questions of me, apparently uninterested in anything I might tell him, and beckoning us, he proceeded into the center of the chamber. Without prompting, he then began to describe the purpose and the function of the activities which took place within the site.

“Over there,” he motioned, “are members of the APCFB, the Authority for the Punishment of Cruelty to Fellow Beings. Their charge is to ease the lives of our fellow creatures.” He described what he called their most recent Great Success. One of their number had proposed the adoption of Creature Carriers. These were slings to be worn around the neck, large enough for a small animal to lie in comfortably. Any member of the Village who came across an animal that was injured, sick, or even simply too tired to walk, was to place the animal in the pouch and carry it to the nearest Friends Comfort Station. Those who successfully provided such succor to fellow creatures would be rewarded by the Guardians. This proposal had been adopted with a recent Honk and was now fully in use.

Although this measure was universally hailed, its implementation had led to unforeseen complications. Several of the Villagers had pointed out that insects residing in hair and beards not only received transportation, but also nourishment from their host’s body. The point was well taken, and presently, this group was attempting to devise a way to count the number of lice, fleas and other vermin on the body of each individual villager, so that each carrier could be rewarded accordingly.

Our host next described the names and purposes of the other groups in the room, but much of this I have now forgotten. He then announced that we would visit the most ancient group. “These are the ones who consider Matters of the Greatest Importance,” he stated. They were in an adjoining room, and it was there to which he led us.

The Experimental Method

We were ushered into a smaller chamber, where five individuals were to be observed, sitting on the floor in a circle. This, he announced, was the Human Pestilence Group. Their charge was to devise means to stop and to reverse the destructive impact of human existence on Gaia. Our host whispered that this work was too important to disturb them, but he volunteered to provide some examples of their deliberations.

One of their earliest successes, he claimed, was in dealing with the emission of noxious gases from the backsides of bovine creatures, animals which had earlier been bred to large numbers as a food source for humans. At first, the group succeeded in devising a sophisticated contraption—called a fart-o-meter—to be attached to the rear hole of the animal. This device converted the gas that was injurious to Gaia into a harmless substance. However, it was then discovered that the same gas was emitted in even greater quantities from the mouths of the creatures, so they devised a similar device—called a burp-o-meter—which was strapped over the head, covering the entire jaw. This also worked, and together this was proclaimed as the Fart-Burp Solution.

Regrettably, one side effect was that the burp-o-meter, since it fully encased the mouth, also prevented the creatures from eating, and in short order they all starved to death, and the species became extinct. Although this unforeseen outcome was lamented by all, it was pointed out that the noxious gases which threatened Gaia had also been eliminated, so the experiment was heralded as a Great Success.

Our host explained that, over the course of many generations, this group had devised thousands of experiments to reverse the sins committed against Gaia. Not all of them, he admitted had worked. I questioned him on this, and he went on to enumerate several experiments that had been tried many years ago. One was to grow tails on humans, so “they might return to the trees from whence they came.” Another was to graft gills on to humans, so “they might return to the sea.” Unfortunately, in attempting to swing from branch to branch, the tails had all broken off with subjects plummeting to the ground, and those who were given gills and sent to inhabit the oceans had all drowned. These experiments were deemed Partial Successes.

He also described new challenges which have arisen. Since the implementation of an omnivegetation diet, many generations ago, humans had undergone a physiological change in their digestive systems, and it had been discovered that they now emitted the same noxious gases that were earlier witnessed with the bovines. The group before me was now fervently attempting to find a way, less drastic than the Fart-Burp Solution, to meet this new threat. Their first attempt was to attach a series of hoses, one from the rectum to the mouth and another from the urinary track to the nose. Mid way, both hoses were bisected and connected to separate large filtration devices, each almost four feet in diameter. The genius of this apparatus was that it not only trapped all the dangerous gases, but that the filtration system was designed to recycle all of the bodily waste into nourishment. When put into practice, however, the volunteers all suffocated and expired, amidst great screams and convulsive flailings about. This, too, was deemed a Partial Success.

At this point, our host launched into an agitated description of efforts that had been made to improve the functioning of the various groups. Apparently, at some point in the past, the Wise Ones had determined that what was desired was Greater Wisdom in their deliberations. Toward that end, they had brought other species of creatures into their groups. Alas, they soon discovered that they were unable discern the meaning of the utterances of these fellow beings, and all efforts to devise a means of translation had failed. Thus, the wisdom of these contributions was lost. Even worse, most of the new recruits simply wandered out of the building altogether, since no one was allowed to touch or interfere with them in any way.

Suddenly, one of the members of the group residing on the floor hissed in our direction, which I took to be a signal that we were making too much noise. So with that, we exited back to the main chamber.

It appeared that our visit had reached its conclusion, but our host signaled that he had more he wished to say. His shoulders sagged, and there was an aura of resignation about him. “The truth,” he began, “is that there are still just too many of us. Too many people. The Mountbottoms have helped, of course, to restrain our numbers, but it has been years since their last visit.”

“What are the Mountbottoms?” I asked.

“Why, they are the plagues and epidemics, which in the past have killed off many of us. I have even heard tales that whole villages were extinguished. We pray for their return.” These final words were accompanied by an incomprehensible gesture, one which involved thrusting both hands above his head. He paused, and added, “The problem is we continue to repopulate.”

He then proceed to explain that all methods of preventing childbirth—by this I took him to mean contraception—had been lost after the “banning of the machines,” and that given the “appetites” of the villagers, more and more babies were constantly being born.

“We attempted one solution,” he declared, “by urging that males would only couple with males and females with females, thus ending the cause-and-effect mechanics of reproduction, but the proclivities of our people had so evolved that their sexual activity was entirely polymorphous, and they refused to discriminate among those with whom they chose to copulate. The opposition to this experiment was so great we dared not even submit it to a Honk.

“None of the Wise Men has been able to solve this problem,” he confessed. He shrugged his shoulders: “Only the Gift to Gaia has forestalled total disaster, and perhaps it is only the Ultimate Honk which shall be Gaia’s salvation.”

“What . . .,” I began, but my day’s companion quickly pulled me away. “Not yet,” he whispered. “These matters you shall learn of at the Gathering.”

With that, we thanked our host, bid our good-byes and left the building, returning to the path outside.

Food for Thought

I grabbed the arm of my companion and demanded, “Why did you interrupt me?”

He pulled away and began to walk down the path, but soon he spoke, “There are some things that are not for talking, but for experiencing. You will not be able to comprehend some of these more weighty matters, until we arrive at the Gathering.” He paused, considered, and then continued, “Ever since the 2020 Great Awakening, many years ago, our kind has attempted to live in harmony with Gaia, to live simply, as the first people did at the dawn of time. But we find that no matter how much we try, the destructive actions of our species prove impossible to eradicate.”

“What is this Awakening you speak of?” I enquired.

He shook his head and answered, “No one really knows, for all of the historical records have long since disappeared, but the common view is that it was an ancient event when the old order was overthrown, and a decision was made to rescue Gaia.

“After the Awakening, our ancestors sought to remove all of the barriers which separate us from Gaia’s other children. This has been our continuing mission. Not long ago, we granted Honking rights to all over the age of five, thinking that such unsullied youth might show us the correct path. This has produced very good results—the Creature Carriers you heard speak of came from a Honk introduced by an eight year old. This purity of vision demanded by the young, however, has also resulted in even more formidable challenges.”

“In what way?”

“These youth have demonstrated a profound devotion to Gaia, and they will stand no compromises. Recently, a group of six year olds have raised a proposal to ban the consumption of all living things. We long ago gave up eating flesh, but these youthful Nogans—for that is the name they have adopted—state that killing and eating vegetation of any kind is also a crime against Gaia, and that this is tantamount to murdering Gaia’s offspring. Some have even claimed the ability to communicate with certain varieties of turnips and berries. Their argument is persuasive, and their proposal has been the subject of several Honks. Although it has so far failed to be adopted, each time it receives greater support.”

Despite everything I had seen and heard that day, this proposal of the Nogans truly astonished me. “Why, then what will you eat,” I asked.

“The Wise Ones have anticipated the eventual acceptance of this Honk, so they have been hard at work devising alternative nourishments. There are two groups devoted to this—they were actually meeting in the chamber from which we just departed. One is the Debris Group; the other is the Flint Group. The former of these has attempted to devise a food supply from dead things—fallen leaves, rotted timber and the like. So far this has not been successful. Also, one of the more devout Nogans has challenged this line of research, arguing that even deceased matter provides nourishment to Gaia. The Flint Group seeks to overcome this objection by creating food from the rocks in the ground. They have devised means to create powders from these rocks and have produced various combinations which they hope will be nutritious, but so far all that have ingested them have sickened.”

My friend continued, “One of the Wise Men proposed that we begin to consume the bodies of our own kind, and this was initially greeted with great enthusiasm. A small group attempted the practice, but it was learned that the change in our bodies from generations of eating plant life had resulted in an inability to digest flesh. Many of the volunteers suffered great agony, but the survivors were hailed as Warriors for Gaia and generously rewarded. You will learn more of these matters here, at this our next stop,” and suddenly I realized that we had now come to a halt before another large structure.

I Meet the Guardians

The building before which we stood was a mass of angles and irregular discordant shapes, with parts of the structure resembling rhombi, other parts trapezoidal. In addition, a large triangular spire ascended upwards from the roof. Over the doorway hung a simple sign, with the words Guardians of the Beans.

Once again, without knocking, my companion opened the door, and we entered. Unlike the large chamber of the Wise Ones, we were now standing in a rather small anteroom. Its shape was one of an uneven and crooked polygon, with narrow passages leading off in many directions. Affixed to the wall over one of the passages was again a large portrait of an individual, this with a nameplate which bore the word Uklid.

We were alone, but in one corner of the room there was a small gong and mallet, which my companion walked over to and struck, producing a very loud sound. After what seemed to be a rather long wait, I heard clapping noises coming from one of passageways, and then a figure emerged. His appearance startled me, for it was at great variance to what I had witnessed so far. His face and head—and from what could be ascertained, his entire body—were hairless. As to attire, the short skirt, which I had presumed was the universal garment, was absent, and he was clad only in a type of rectangular barrel, which hung from his shoulders, supported by suspenders.

What was most unusual, however, was that protruding from his left forearm was a device that appeared to be nothing other than an abacus. Upon closer inspection, I was shocked to see that the device was not strapped to the arm, but had been grafted into the skin itself.

“What brings you to the Home of the Sacred Beans?” our new host intoned.

Once again, my guide explained my foreign origin, as well as my thirst for knowledge. The Guardian, for so I took him to be, nodded repeatedly throughout all of this, and then announced, with a sonorous firmness, “All is open for the curious. Please, if you follow me, I will reveal all of our wonders.”

He led us down one of the very narrow passageways. We made several angular turns and then emerged, to my surprise, into a room even larger that the outer chamber of the Wise Ones. What greeted my eyes was so fantastic, it is difficult, even now, to describe. The chamber was crowded with individuals who, although encumbered by their barrel attire, feverishly waddled from one side of the room to another, and there was a din of shouts and exclamations.

One entire side of the room was taken up with numerous types of what appeared to be antennae, as well as variations of the device my companion wore on his wrist. Crowds stood around these devices feverishly working the abaci protruding from their arms. “Whoop!” one yelled. “Shazam!” another exclaimed. Meanwhile, others skipped, hopped and pirouetted from this group to another on the opposite side of the room, and the noise emanating from there was even greater. From this latter group, a chant arose, which seemed to be, “Pass or Fail, Pass or Fail, Pass or Fail . . .”

It was all outlandish, a scene fantastique, and the dizzying effect of the goings-on was only exacerbated by the universal noisy emissions of “noxious gases” from the front and rear of almost all those present, the repeated sounds of which, combined with the chanting, had an uncanny melodic effect.

“What is all this?” I yelled, for there was no other way to make myself heard. Motioning me to wait, our host walked over to a table, retrieved a very large blanket, came back and threw it over the heads of our trio. “Now,” he said, “we may converse under the Muffler.” We were in darkness, for the heavy blanket reached almost to the floor, our faces only inches apart, but despite the circumstances, I repeated, “What is going on here?”

“One of the responsibilities of the Guardians,” he replied, “is to safeguard the sacred Honks. It is in this chamber that all of the Honks are transmitted, and where all the responses are received. Those you saw on the one side are receiving the responses, which they number on their arm extensions. They then go to the other side where the totals are collected into the final tally. The song you heard is our anthem, and accompaniment is produced by the Choir of the Guardians. We call this chamber the Temple of the Honk,” he stated with hushed solemnity.

With effort, I restrained the impulse to laugh uproariously, and instead asked, “Who decides what is to be sent out as a Honk?”

“We have a procedure for this,” he replied. “At the Gathering, anyone may propose a Honk. If enough interest is shown, then it is brought before the Elders of the Guardians to consider. We frequently consult with the Wise Ones before we announce a Universal Honk, but the final decision rests with us.”

“What do beans have to do with any of this?”

“Why, the Sacred Beans allow us to tabulate the Honks,” he exclaimed, and with that he raised the blanket so I could see the abacus attached to his arm, and to my astonishment I saw that instead of beads, the device was constructed of strings and what appeared to be pinto beans.

“But this is not the most important role the Beans play,” he continued. “For that you must visit our Hall of Ledjers.” He threw off the blanket, and without another word led us back to the passageway from which we had entered.

Apparently, none of the building’s rooms connected to one another, and the only way to get anywhere was to return to the anteroom, and then take another passageway. The clapping sound which had originally alerted me to the approach of our host, was a ritual he repeated on all of these traversals, to alert others coming from the opposite direction to back up, since there was no room for anyone to pass.

Lessons in Economics

Exiting from the second passageway, we emerged into a room—if one can call it that—which was so vast it was difficult to even guess its size. It stretched out in all directions at least one hundred yards or more, and I wondered that I had not observed this size when examining the building’s exterior.

Here, too, I saw a large section devoted to the transmission devices which received and transmitted Honks, but in addition there were large mounds of objects—hundreds of them—dispersed throughout the place. We proceeded to walk through the room, and I excused myself in order to make a closer examination of one of the mounds. I was flabbergasted to find that it consisted entirely of beans. I rejoined the others, just as our host was announcing, “This is the Hall of Ledjers. It is here that the good are rewarded and the bad are punished.”

Sweeping his hand, to take in the entirety of the Hall, the Guardian then proceeded to describe the activity which took place within it. “Long ago,” he began, “we eliminated all forms of compulsory labor, as a manifestation of male oppression. This was decided with the Honk to ban Testosteronism. The problem then arose as to how we would survive, while acting only in a way which would honor Gaia. The Wise Ones had a stroke of genius, and promulgated the concept of Good Behavior. Those who take actions which benefit Gaia are rewarded with beans, and those who harm Gaia in any way, or who disobey one of the Universal Honks, are punished with the confiscation of a portion of their beans.

“For example, if one rescues a Creature of Gaia, this might be rewarded with, say, five Beans. A less dramatic act, such as fanning the face of a tired creature may receive one Bean, or even a half a Bean. On the other hand, a destructive action, like killing an insect, is punished, with the penalty depending on whether the action was deliberate or accidental. We are constantly reassessing the Bean reward of each action.

“This is the basis for our economy,” he stated. “We have named it the Skeener System. It is an arrangement which protects Gaia, and it reinforces right-thinking among our people. The piles of Beans you observe are the individual Bean Banks of each member of the village. These Beans may be used to trade for an available Power Unit, or a vacant abode, or other necessities, and they are the only means to partake in many of the activities offered by the Comrades of Eternal Love.”

“What about practical needs,” I asked, “such as food or health care?”

“We have no need for health care, for those who are called back to Gaia in the natural way are honored for their service. As for nourishment, those who collect foodstuffs for the people are awarded Beans, but such rewards are smaller than those actions which directly aid Gaia and her creatures, sometimes no more than a quarter or an eighth of a Bean. The same is true for those who discover items which can be used to fix our devices, for we must depend on old parts we uncover to repair and maintain them. This skavenginq—for so it is called—is now increasingly difficult, since the number of paths is being regularly reduced, and we can obtain only that which is within arm’s reach.”

Our host stopped, and I pondered for several moments all that he had enumerated. “So the only way to obtain beans is through good behavior?” I finally asked.

“One other way exists,” he replied. “There is another room, one we can not enter today because the passageway has crumbled and all access is currently blocked. It is the place of the Bean Swaps. You see, we are constantly reviewing what the value of each action is worth in Beans, and these are revised from time to time. The members of the village may negotiate among themselves to exchange Beans based on what they project the future value of a certain action might be worth. More recently, a new practice has arisen whereby even individuals who possess no Beans, or very few, are allowed to place bets on the movement in values of the Beans, and if they are correct they are rewarded handsomely. It is all very confusing, but it is allowed because we are prohibited from interfering with the free flow of Beans.”

With that, suddenly and without warning, he burst into song:

The Beans are here! The Beans are there!

The Sacred Beans roam everywhere!

Are they up? Are they down?

Those with Beans will never frown!

The rhythm of these utterances was punctuated by loud belches, delivered with gusto at the end of each phrase.

This incredible performance ended as abruptly as it began, and thankfully, his manner indicated that he did not expect any response. I observed a physical signal from my companion that it was time to go. Nevertheless, I asked one final question, “What is the action which has the highest reward in beans?”

“Why, that is the Gift to Gaia.”

“What is that?”

“The Gift was sanctioned by the Sacrificial Honk. It arose from the recognition that there are too many of our species. Long ago we decided that the only solution to the polluting effects of our multiplying was to eliminate some of our numbers. Initially, this was done by lottery and only applied to newborn children, no more than 48 hours old. Later it became so popular that the lottery was abandoned and parents eagerly offered up their children. Over time the age of those donated was extended to 30 months. Those who make this offering are richly rewarded.”

“Do you mean you murder young children?”

“We murder no one! It is done joyfully. In fact, one of the greatest Warriors for Gaia who has ever inhabited our Village offered up 17 of her children in this way. It is the holiest of our practices. In addition, the remains of those who are sacrificed are used to nourish our fellow creatures.”

“Do you mean that you feed the bodies to the animals?”

“You must not use that word. It is banned! We are speaking of the Creatures of Gaia, of whom we are the most flawed.”

I was dumbfounded and sickened by this final exchange and had no desire to continue the conversation. Taking the arm of my companion, I led him back through the passageway and out of the building.

Ponderings

My guide informed me that our final destination would be Paradise, the location where the Gathering took place. “Paradise is the creation of the Comrades of Eternal Love,” he stated. “You will not meet them, for they operate entirely in secret. You will only witness the bonds of love that they have created.” With that, he set out on a new pathway, and I followed behind.

Thankfully, we walked in silence, for this gave me time to consider all of the conflicting emotions now seizing my mind. Upon awakening this morn, I had been confused by my predicament. Then, as we began to explore the village, my curiosity took hold, and I experienced astonishment and even bemusement at what I observed. Now, I found that wonder had given way to a creeping sense of revulsion, nay, even horror. What sort of place was I confined in? How had humans come to this? Despite my continued loss of memory, I was certain that my native culture could not in any way resemble the mores of this village.

With a growing inner turmoil of spirit, I followed my guide to our final destination.

The Gathering

Our path had taken us to the very edge of the village. We wound down a long hill and emerged into a very large tree-lined clearing. My guide announced, “This is Paradise, the refuge granted to us by Gaia where we commune in our natural state.”

There was an entranceway at the edge of the clearing, and I beheld a huge banner which read Gathering of the Trybes. We strode into the clearing, and what greeted my senses was both shocking and breathtaking. There were thousands of people in the clearing, they were all naked, and the noise which had been muffled in our approach by the trees and undergrowth, was loud, raucous, discordant, overpowering. The mass of people was heaving to-and-fro, bodies and limbs intertwined, men, women, boys, girls, and to my astonishment, numerous animals of several varieties. The stink that permeated the air was beyond anything I had experienced up to that moment.

My guide turned abruptly to me and declared, “This is the Gathering. It is where our people live most of their lives. This is Gaia’s gift to us. Now I must leave you, for I belong with them,” and he gestured toward the throng below. “I have been gone too long, and my spirit needs replenishment.” With that, shedding his Power Unit and skirt, he plunged into the mass of bodies, moving up, down, sideways—eventually disappearing from sight.

There was throbbing music of a sort. I heard wild drums, clashing cymbals, whistles, flutes, windpipes and other instruments. There were chants from several different directions, piercing screams, and howls. Amidst the man-made sounds were the wild screeches and eruptions from different animals. The motion was frenetic and hypnotic, as the throng pulsated in unison, groaning, swaying, never ceasing.

The music, the chants, the shrieks all produced a driving rhythm, which the throng both created and followed. Within the mass of bodies I witnessed, over and over, a full gamut of shameless behavior, too perverse to describe here. The grotesqueness of the scene—of the experience—was stupefying. The sights, the noises, the smells, the shocks—my head began to swim, and I feared I would lose consciousness.

I hurried to the outer edge of the clearing, walking around the perimeter. Here, in several locations, there seemed to be several zones for special activity. I approached one and saw naked men, women and children on their knees being whipped with large tree branches, under a sign which read Pleasure is Pain. There were several other such “exhibits,” but I had no appetite for any more of this, so I steered clear. After I had proceeded for some way, racking my mind as to what I should do next, I came upon an exhibit much larger than any of the others.

There were hundreds of people gathered, yelling and gesturing. Before us was a stage upon which was a structure that resembled an altar. Over it hung a banner which read, Our Gift to Gaia. Then, I perceived that on one side of the stage a long line of women were approaching. Some held babies in their arms. Others grasped the hands of young toddlers. They methodically, mechanically, marched toward the stage. As I watched, the first woman placed her infant on the altar, and a man holding a large knife, raised high over his head, approached the infant. . . . I ran from the place, my heart exploding, my mind frozen. Behind me, the crowd erupted in a loud cheer, and then, after a minute another cheer . . . and then another.

My God! What was I to do? Was there no escape?

I continued to run, knowing not where. Perhaps I could flee through the woods and find a saner community of humans? Or possibly I could make my way back to where I had awoken this morning and remember how I had arrived there? Get out. Get out. Get out of this Celebration of Death. I continued to run.

Suddenly, a deafening sound overpowered everything, and almost instantly all of the noise and activity ceased within the clearing. I stopped, seized the arm of one standing next to me, and demanded, “What is going on?”

“Why, it is time for the Ultimate Honk,” he stated.

The Ultimate Honk—this is what my guide had said I would learn of at the Gathering. “What is the Ultimate Honk?” I almost yelled.

He seemed stunned that I should ask such a question. Giving me a piercing look, he replied, “It is the Honk to decide if we should kill ourselves to free Gaia from our polluting presence. Many are predicting that it will pass this time.” He shook his arm loose. “I must go. I have to make my choice known.”

I delayed him, and demanded, “Which way have you decided?”

“Why, death, of course.”

My mind reeled. My limbs would not respond. . . .

* * * * * *

The woman turned to the young boy in the seat next to her, reached out a hand, and ever so gently began to jostle him. The boy’s only response was to switch position and utter a soft sound. Smiling, the woman brushed a strand of hair off his forehead, and with slightly more force, shook him again. His movements stopped, and after a few seconds his eyes opened. Momentarily, his vision was unfocused. Then, abruptly, he jerked his head from side to side, looking first in one direction and then the other. His manner was one of confusion. He returned his attention to the face of the woman, and slowly an expression of recognition entered his eyes. “Mother,” he said.

The woman gazed at him tenderly. “It is time to wake up, Francis,” she said. “We are almost ready to land.”

“Mother! I had the strangest dream!”

“It was only a dream my son.”

“But it was so strange! I was a grown man, and I was in this . . . this place.” Here words momentarily failed him, but he resumed. “It was horrible . . . wild animals and awful people . . . and awful things.”

The woman took the boy’s face in her hands, but he rushed on, “There were all kinds of things.” Here, he paused, but continued, his voice quavering, “There were things I don’t understand. I was so scared.”

With the fingers of her right hand, the woman lifted up his chin, until their faces were in alignment. “It was only a dream,” she repeated. “None of it can harm you. I am with you.” She gently kissed his cheek, and then after a moment kissed the other. She dropped her hand, and taking a different tone, she instructed, “Now you must get ready. We will be landing soon. We will be meeting your father. Won’t that please you?”

The boy nodded aggressively and suddenly beamed a smile. “Oh, yes! I have missed him so.”

With that, their plane—an Earth-Moon X-128 shuttle—glided downward through the clouds toward the spaceport below.

What Are the Children Telling Us?

by Robert Ingraham

April 6—On March 30, 2019, the Swedish 16-year-old, Greta Thunberg, was honored with a “Special Climate Protection Award” at the Golden Camera ceremony in Germany. Thunberg, who the day before had led a 10,000-person demonstration in front of the Brandenburg Gate, received the award to a standing ovation, amidst the gushing adulation showered on her by the assembled movie and television stars, paparazzi, authors, academics, activists and politicians.

The occasion for the award was Thunberg’s leading role in catalyzing the March 15th world-wide “School Strike for Climate” demonstrations which took place in more than 100 nations, with at least 1.4 million—primarily very young—students participating, all around the demand for strict adherence to the proposals of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for reducing global carbon emissions, dismantling industry, and eliminating key components of the modern economy.

Like her only marginally less delusional U.S. counterpart, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the “eco-warrior” Thunberg has routinely engaged in “end-times” prophecies. In speeches, letters and proclamations, she has declared again and again that there are only eleven years remaining to “save the planet” from the destruction wrought by human beings, and on January 23 of this year she predicted:

The date is January 23, 2031. The world has just ended. No humans are left on the planet once known as “Earth.”

James Rea

Greta Thunberg

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The “School Strike for Climate” is a movement which Thunberg, herself, is given credit for sparking, following her 2018 one-person vigil at the Swedish Parliament. On March 15th, demonstrations occurred in more than 2,000 cities. Germany had the largest number of demonstrators at 300,000, and of the 18 nations which had the highest participation, four (the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) are countries over which Queen Elizabeth is sovereign, and eleven others are all from northern Europe.

In the United States, the School Strike essentially flopped with only 17,000 participants nationwide, compared to Canada’s 150,000. Nevertheless, we also see in America the media hype and promotion surrounding freshman Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, as well as the rush to endorse her suicidal Green New Deal by Democratic Party pre-Presidential candidates. Like Thunberg, Ocasio-Cortez has regularly predicted the end of the world. Speaking at an event commemorating Martin Luther King Day on January 21, 2019, Ocasio-Cortez stated, “The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”

CC/Dimitri Rodriguez

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) at the Women’s March on NYC on March 19, 2019.

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Adding to the pessimism, a few weeks later, in an “Instagram Live” video, she warned, “Our planet is going to face disaster if we don’t turn this ship around . . . and it does lead, I think, young people, to have a legitimate question: ‘You know, should—is it ok, to still have children?’”

Young Victims

Greta Thunberg has proclaimed, over and over, that it is the children who will save the planet, and she has stated in several interviews that her conversion to becoming an “eco-warrior” began at the age of eight. She became a vegan at the age of eleven, and took other actions, such as radically reducing her consumption of energy and avoiding flying. At age 15 she initiated her vigil in front of the Stockholm Parliament, holding a self-written cardboard sign, “Skolstrejk För Klimatet” (“School Strike for Climate”).

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A great many of the March 15th actions were led by very young—sometimes pre-pubescent—children. For example, the strike in Scotland was led by 13-year-old Holly Gillibrand; in the Netherlands, the organizer was 10-year-old Lilly Platt; and in Canada it was 6th grader Sophia Mathur. Even in Thailand, one of the not-advanced-sector nations that had any participants, the student strike was led by an 11-year-old. This is a pattern being repeated over and over again, with the role of young girls particularly pronounced.

On March 1, 2019 Thunberg issued an open letter to the London Guardian, proclaiming the generational divide, which thus necessitates, according to this Golden Camera award winner, leadership by the young:

We, the young, are deeply concerned about our future. We are the voiceless future of humanity. We will no longer accept this injustice. . . . We finally need to treat the climate crisis as a crisis. It is the biggest threat in human history, and we will not accept the world’s decision-makers’ inaction that threatens our entire civilization. . . . We can and will stop this madness. United we will rise until we see climate justice. We demand the world’s decision-makers take responsibility and solve this crisis. You have failed us in the past. If you continue failing us in the future, we, the young people, will make change happen by ourselves. The youth of this world has started to move, and we will not rest again.

Currently, organizations targeting children for recruitment to “save the planet” number in the hundreds, if not thousands. Fridays for Future, Youth for Climate and Youth Strike 4 Climate, We the Future, Earth Guardians, Rising Up!, Extinction Rebellion—these are but a few of them.

This is a massive effort, and what we are witnessing is the cynical use of the very young to agitate for a genocidal agenda, one which is demanded by the British Empire and their like-minded oligarchical allies. The youth are merely the fodder for oligarchical designs. These are young victims who have been abused since birth. They have been trained to believe that the human species is a scourge upon the earth, a polluter, a destroyer. They have been inculcated in a form of nature worship not far removed from the worst forms of degenerate culture known in modern and ancient history, and that discovered in the archeological record. Add to the mix the grip of Hollywood, video games and legalized drugs, and you have a youth culture extraordinarily manipulable.

Innocent and the ‘Innocents’

At this juncture, let us look back at another era, when a similar fever of hysteria gripped a generation of the very young.

In 1198, Innocent III was elected Pope. Historians have dubbed him the “great crusading Pope.” Not only did he organize the Fourth Crusade, he also called into existence numerous bloody “crusades” in Europe itself, including the infamous Albigensian Crusade in France, as well crusades in Spain and the Baltic region.

A graduate of the Bologna School of Jurisprudence, where the curriculum centered on the teaching of bestial Roman Law, Pope Innocent’s writings unveil a soul tormented by a profound pessimism. His premier work is De Miseria Conditionis Humanae (On the Wretchedness of the Human Condition). It is divided into three parts: first, the wretchedness of the human body; second, man’s futile ambitions; third, the decay of the human corpse, the anguish of the damned in hell and the Day of Judgment.

Shortly after his investiture, in 1198, Innocent issued his first “crusading letter,” sending it to all the archbishops of the West. He directed the call to arms not only to kings and emperors, but to counts and barons and even to cities. For the next 18 years, Innocent’s proclamations kept up a drumbeat for the urgent demand that Europe take up arms to defend Christianity. The issue of the Crusades—as a holy mission—permeated all of European culture throughout those decades. Doom and destruction were predicted if the people of Europe failed to act. Processions, special masses, sermons and other interventions were carried out non-stop in thousands of towns and villages to energize the “crusading spirit.” As one historian puts it:

There had long existed an ancient custom of the Church, observed on St. Mark’s day, April 25th, called the “Litania Major,” or Greater Litany. It was a processional litany, instituted centuries before by Gregory the Great, during the ravages of the plague, but generally still maintained in Latin Christendom. On this day the altars were shrouded in black, and priests and people went through the streets of towns and cities, chanting prayers and carrying crosses likewise draped. From this last feature, the day was popularly called the “Black Crosses.” At the time of which we are speaking, this ceremony was adapted to commemorate the sufferings of those who had died in the defense of the Holy Land, and to implore mercy in behalf of the Christians now beleaguered there, as well as of the many others that were pining in slavery. We can well imagine that such an observance, accompanied by stirring sermons and vivid threats and promises, would have excited the people, especially the young, who had neither the experience nor the judgment requisite to discern the hopelessness of the Crusades, and the delusiveness of such appeals.[fn_1]

The Crusade Begins

In the spring of 1212, a twelve-year-old boy named Stephen, from the village of Cloyes in France, began preaching in the village and surrounding areas, declaiming that he had been selected by God to lead a Crusade of Children to rescue the Holy Land. He traveled to the Shrine of St. Denys in Paris. There, the shrine was turned over for his exclusive use, and thousands, mostly children, came to hear him. Many of them returned to their villages and their message soon became a contagion. According to contemporary reports, perhaps more than half of these recruits were young girls.

Some of these acolytes traveled as far as Burgundy and Champagne. A second point of origin for the crusade was Cologne. Here, a ten-year-old boy named Nicholas began to preach and recruit. He too claimed to have received a command from God. As in France, Nicholas quickly recruited thousands of adherents, and some of his followers, known as “minor prophets,” traveled to other regions, and their fervor, and the message of their holy mission, enticed many more to join.

Engraving from 1888

The Children’s Crusade.

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By the end of June, Nicholas was prepared to set off on the Crusade, but a disagreement arose as to the route, and his “army” split into two groups. Nevertheless, in early July, Nicholas and those who chose to follow him, numbering at least 20,000, departed for the Holy Land.[fn_2] They traveled southward along the Rhine, their numbers stretched out for several miles along the road.

Many wore makeshift uniforms and special hats. They carried banners and crosses, proclaiming their mission. They sang as they marched, mostly hymns to Jesus and Mary. They possessed no weapons, because they believed that the Muslims would lay down their arms at the sight of them. At each new village, their entrance created great commotion, and they won new recruits from the astonished and enraptured children. Their message was simple: God had chosen the children to save Europe and rescue the Holy Sepulcher.

Soon, however, reality intervened. They reached the Alps, and many perished in the crossing, from accidents, hunger, and disease. In Italy they were set upon by roving bands who kidnapped large numbers of them and stole many of their possessions. They were at the mercy of any who saw fit to molest them. Yet, they continued.

On August 25th, they arrived at the gates of Genoa. According to contemporary reports, no more than 7,000 remained of the 20,000 who had left Cologne. They were granted permission to enter the city and marched to the seashore, having been promised that the sea would part, giving them a land route to march to Jerusalem. When this failed to happen, the band began to disintegrate. Some decided to remain in Genoa; others resolved to return home, almost all of whom perished or disappeared along the way. The small number that remained with the “army” marched on to Pisa. There, some obtained sea passage. It is reported that two shiploads of children set sail for the Holy Land. There is no record of them arriving; no one knows what happened to them.

The last remnant of these crusaders eventually walked to Rome, where they obtained an audience with Innocent III. He urged them to return to their parents, but he also praised their devotion to the cause of the Crusades and admonished them that since they had taken a vow to rescue the Holy Sepulcher, they must fulfill this as adults.

The Second German Army

The portion of the Cologne youth that chose to not follow Nicholas along the Rhine,—probably a group of about the same size—departed from the city almost simultaneously, eventually arriving at Lake Constance. Along the way, they too suffered from hunger, exposure, and attacks from local nobles. They passed through Switzerland and eventually arrived on the plains of Lombardy. Unfortunately, this was a region greatly devastated by the wars with Frederick Barbarossa. Here these German youth received a very hostile reception. Many were murdered; others were grabbed to be carried away to misery and slavery. Nevertheless, those that survived continued their march, waving banners and singing hymns.

Arriving in Ravenna, they repeated the attempt of those who sought to “part the sea” at Genoa, for a route to Jerusalem. When this failed, they continued their journey. As their numbers dwindled, those who remained passed through Apulia and other cities, eventually reaching Brindisi, almost at the extremity of the Italian peninsula. There they were treated with extreme cruelty, with almost all of the girls carried away and sold into slavery at the public market. Again, as had happened at Pisa, the few who remained managed to obtain passage on a ship, which they were told was bound for the Holy Land. They departed and they, too, were never heard from again.

Woodcut by Gustav Doré, 1891

The Children’s Crusade.

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The French Children

During the month of July, the crusading army of Stephen of Cloyes departed from Vendôme, a city between Paris and Tours. Of the 30,000 who set off, more than half were under 12 years old according to one source. They passed through central France, crossing the Rhone at Lyons, eventually arriving at Marseilles, the entire journey of about 300 miles being far less arduous and shorter than those taken by the two German armies.

Here, too, they stood on the shore, expecting the waves to part, only to be frustrated. They came back to the shore each morning for many days, and eventually a significant number gave up and set out to return home. Thousands remained, however, and a deal was struck with two merchants who offered to provide vessels to convey them to Palestine, free of charge. In total, seven vessels set out, crammed with at least 5,000 children crusaders, for transport to the east. As they pulled out to sea, sacred rites were performed, and hymns were chanted. They also were never seen or heard from again.

Eighteen years later, an aged priest arrived in Europe, claiming to have escaped from the Muslims and to possess knowledge as to the fate of the French children. According to the priest, the merchants had taken the children to North Africa and sold them to a Muslim slave trader. They were then all auctioned off, with a significant number being transported to both Alexandria and Baghdad. Whether this story is true or not, it is certain that none of the children ever returned to France. In 1237, Pope Gregory IX erected a church to honor the French martyrs. He called it Ecclesia Novorum Innocentium—the Church of the New Innocents.

Then and Now

What are the lessons to be learned from all of this? How do the child crusaders relate to today’s eco-warriors? The first thing to recognize is the axiomatic deep pessimism, which permeates today’s “greenie” movement. The ideology of this movement now has an almost hypnotic grip on the minds of millions of children. It is grounded entirely in a pessimistic view of human nature—that the human species is a destructive force, that scientific advancement threatens the future, that the world is coming to an end. The very young are being cynically manipulated through fear, and they are being told that only they can provide salvation. That the greatest impact of this campaign has been in Europe—especially in northern Europe—is no accident. The effects of two Europe-wide wars in the last 100 years—wars which killed tens of millions—as well as the 20th century heritage of synarchism, fascism, and pervasive existentialism has created a deeply pessimistic youth culture, disconnected from any concept of upward human advancement and progress.

Look at what the modern environmentalist movement really is. The Worldwide Fund for Nature (World Wildlife Fund) is the largest, and arguably the most influential organization within this milieu. The WWF was founded in 1961, at the initiative of Julian Huxley, a scion of several generations of racist British oligarchs. Huxley, in 196,1 was also the President of the British Eugenics Society. From the beginning, the WWF’s two primary sponsors were Prince Philip Mountbatten, the Duke of Edinburgh, who has publicly called for the extermination of more than half the human species, and Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld of the Netherlands, a former card-carrying member of the Nazi Party.

Thurston Hopkins

Julian Huxley

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Huxley, Philip, Bernhard, and others of their ilk, have been remarkably frank about their true goals: kill off several billion people; prevent poor nations from developing modern economies; put a halt to scientific and industrial advancement; and prevent all upward human progress. Theirs is a Malthusian view, an oligarchic view, and it represents the utter depravity of the ruling elites.

Yet, children are rushing forth to become zealots for this oligarchical cause, all because they have been told that they are participating in a mission to save Mother Earth. This is the new religion, the new Holy Crusade. You can not argue scientific truth with a “green warrior.” You are dealing with superstitious crusaders, with mass delusions, with infantile fears—“The world will end if we do not act!”

For Innocent III, the actions of the doomed children of France and Germany were a spectacular boon to his agenda of keeping the crusading fervor alive. So too for today’s deluded children. They are the mere sacrificial pawns of a deeper oligarchical agenda. They are the marionettes who don’t see the strings above their own heads. These children have been reared in a cesspool of moral ambivalence, war, hedonism and the curtailment of scientific progress. We are simply witnessing, as in the 13th century, the cultural effluvia of a dying system.

Why do we tolerate this? Putting the weight of the world on the shoulders of young children—not to speak of terrifying them with doomsday scenarios—is simply child abuse. It is menticide. Youth should be a time of creative play, when the development of the cognitive faculties is paramount. Would not the world be a better place if we had more children like Jackson Oswalt, the twelve-year-old who built a nuclear fusion reactor in the family room of his parents’ home in Memphis? Shouldn’t children be given the opportunity to develop their creative talents, and aspire to become participants in the colonization of Mars and other great tasks? Don’t they deserve a truly human identity?

[fn_1]. George Zabriskie Gray, The Children’s Crusade: An Episode of the Thirteenth Century, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1870. [back to text for fn_1]

[fn_2]. The size of both the German and French “youth crusades’’ is extraordinary, given that, at that time, most towns and villages only had a few hundred residents, and even the cities generally numbered in the low thousands. [back to text for fn_2]

November 17, 1981

The Jesuits Charge that

LaRouche Is ‘An Agent of the Vatican’

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

2019 Editor’s Note: Although the author changed his views on some particulars during succeeding decades, in its essentials this work exemplifies his worldview for the remainder of his life. This version has been edited.

Fellow-Jesuits of U. S. Secretary Alexander Haig are presently circulating the astonishing accusation that “LaRouche and his publications” are “agents of the Vatican.”

Although the accusation originates with leading Jesuit spokesmen, such as Dr. Stephen Mumford of the International Fertility Research Program, the Jesuits are collaborating closely in this with leading Malthusians such as Kissinger crony Donald Lesh, former head of the U.S. branch of the genocidalist Club of Rome. All, like Haig himself, are supporters in practice of the genocidal “Global 2000” dogma published by the criminal administration of President Jimmy Carter.

Among themselves, Malthusian Jesuits and allies such as Lesh argue that the depth and accuracy of knowledge of Italian and Vatican politics in “LaRouche’s publications” is circumstantial proof that LaRouche is being aided by the Vatican’s intelligence service. Privately, Mumford argues: “These organizations are making real inroads in the thinking of the population on ‘Global 2000’ and the population issue. . . . We don’t have proof of the money, but we can now say that anything LaRouche’s organizations say is Church policy.”

Unlike most of the lies spread against me in various news-media and slander-networks by the international drug-lobby, the “Vatican agent” charge is made sincerely, if wrongly. In a recent interview Mumford stated his accusation openly. He accused EIR of being “the mouthpiece of the Vatican,” and added: “LaRouche has all the issues right. . . . It is as if he is speaking to the Pope. He is my enemy, and I am his.”

Privately, Mumford reveals that his accusation is born of wishful thinking. His object is to create an aura of isolation around the Vatican, as he explains in detail. He views the organizations associated with me as a “secular force” coming to the rescue of that Vatican which the Jesuit order and its Church of England allies are determined to destroy. If it were true that “LaRouche and his publications” were only “agents of the Vatican,” rather than independent allies, this, Mumford insists, would weaken the credibility of “LaRouche and his publications.” Mumford’s wish has become father to what now appears to be a sincere, if mistaken conviction.

Mumford and leading Jesuits are quite correct in insisting that “LaRouche has all the issues right” in explaining the Anglican-Jesuit bloc’s plot to destroy the Roman Catholic Confession world-wide. However, in attempting to adduce from this the conclusion that I am a “Vatican agent,” the Jesuits have been seduced by a mixture of their fanatical narrowness of outlook and wishful thinking. They have perpetrated what economists sometimes term a “fallacy of composition,” or, what the common American idiom describes as “missing the forest for the trees.”

The Jesuits Attack the Papacy

In the Western Hemisphere, the Jesuits are sometimes called the “Society of Judas,” because of their leading complicity in promoting Latin American terrorism and their alliance with the Church of England and Eastern Orthodox patriarchs in the effort to destroy the Roman Catholic Confession world-wide. In the USA, Dr. Stephen Mumford is the above-ground spokesman for this cause, the de facto representative of not only the Jesuit order, but also Notre Dame University’s Father Theodore Hesburgh, and a large, schismatic conspiracy within the ranks of the Church’s USA hierarchy.

Mumford correctly outlined the principal motives for this group of schismatics in an article published in the January-February 1981 edition of the magazine, The Humanist. Mumford insists, accurately, that the immediate motive for the Jesuit attempt to destroy the Catholic Church is the Vatican’s unchangeable hostility toward the policies of genocide advocated by the supporters of the Club of Rome and of President Jimmy Carter’s Global 2000 Report.

Against this evil, Malthusian conspiracy of the Jesuits, and the British and Dutch churches, the Vatican has returned to the attack with the recently issued Papal Encyclical, Laborem Exercens. This Encyclical attacks unequivocally both the “green fascist” doctrines of genocidalist Aurelio Peccei and Global 2000. It attacks also the fascist version of “free trade” austerity-dogma associated with Prof. Milton Friedman, the Thatcher government of Britain, and the British Fabian Society’s Friedrich von Hayek.

The Vatican is to be commended and supported for opposing the (actually) fascist dangers of “environmentalist” and Thatcherite policies. More important is the manner in which Laborem Exercens develops its warning against such fascist dangers.

Apostolic Christianity, like the Judaism of Philo of Alexandria and the Islam of ibn Sina’s (Avicenna’s) Metaphysics, rejects the pagan-cult doctrines of “big bang,” or fixed creation. The arguments of Philo of Alexandria against Aristotle’s evil “fixed creation” doctrine are identical with those of Apostolic Christianity. The universe is an evolving process of lawfully-ordered continuing creation. This principle of continuing creation, as opposed to the pagan dogma of “fixed creation,” is the heart and essence of the Gospel of St. John and of the Nicene doctrine of Christianity.

Man, although born as an irrational, hedonistic beast, is also born with a divine spark of potentiality which distinguishes the human individual from beasts. This potentiality is man’s power to bring his knowledge and practice into ever-more-perfect agreement with the lawful principles of continuing creation: the Logos of the Gospel of St. John and of the Nicene doctrine, or what is known to scientists such as Leibniz, as “sufficient reason.” The Christian doctrine adds to the Judaic doctrine of the Messiah (e.g., Philo) the assertion of the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the crucial further principle that the Logos flows from Christ consubstantially as it flows from God the Composer of the Universe. Christ expresses for Christians the living God in the form of man born of woman. Christianity as a body of practice is based, therefore, on the principle of imago vivo Dei, to develop oneself and one’s practice in the image of the living God.

This principle is expressed in Genesis. We cite a part from one of the relevant passages from the Encyclical to this point:

When man, who had been created “in the image of God . . . male and female,” hears the words: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it,” even though these words do not refer directly and explicitly to work, beyond any doubt they indirectly indicate it as an activity for man to carry out in the world [emphasis in the original].

This is the kernel of the point against which the “Society of Judas” and its British, Dutch, and secularist-Malthusian accomplices base their determination to destroy Christianity, beginning with schismatic destruction of the Roman Catholic Confession.

The schismatics propose to replace Christianity with the Gnostic doctrine and the so-called Gnostic Bible, a heathen, pantheistic dogma in which man is instructed to subordinate himself to raw nature, and to live with ethical parity in relations to the beasts. Gnosticism, like Aurelio Peccei, and like Adolf Hitler and Jeremy Bentham before him, like the evil Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes, degrades man to a mere beast, with the morals of a beast.

Only a man-beast, Albert Speer, could have carried Hjalmar Schacht’s evil austerity doctrine to the slave-death-camp-system form Adolf Hitler demanded. Only men and women degraded morally to the level of feral beasts could support implementation of the doctrines of the Club of Rome or Jimmy Carter’s Global 2000 Report today. Only Gnostics such as Anglicans, theosophists-anthroposophs, or of the “Society of Judas” could provide a pseudo-Christian rationalization for replacing Christianity with the hedonistic bio-ethics of David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill.

So, Laborem Exercens counterattacks against “green fascism” and the criminal doctrines of Global 2000, from the standpoint of the most fundamental positive principles of Apostolic Christianity.

Lincoln with Union troops after the Battle of Antietam: his murder was a turning-point away from nation-building.

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In this, the Vatican enjoys the complete, ecumenical support of “LaRouche and his publications.” The Jesuits, such as Stephen Mumford, have overlooked the actual process by which this specific form of ecumenical alliance with the Vatican developed. “Missing the forest for the trees,” the Jesuits have wishfully dreamed up the false explanation, that “LaRouche and his publications” are “agents of the Vatican.”

Let us therefore, for once and for all, settle the truth of the connection, and brush aside the nonsensical “agents of the Vatican” allegations. By what process did “LaRouche and his publications” come to discover what the Jesuits actually represent?

The ICLC

When Mumford speaks of “LaRouche and his organizations,” he means two overlapping kinds of organizations. He means, most emphatically, an association known as the International Caucus of Labor Committees (ICLC), in which the term “labor” has exactly the significance it also has in the recent Papal Encyclical, Laborem Exercens. He means also a second group of organizations and publications in which ICLC members participate as influential components of a much-larger association as a whole.

For example. The National Democratic Policy Committee (NDPC) is a multi-candidate political action committee and one of the leading factions of the Democratic Party in the USA, the spearhead of the fight against the Nazi-modeled monetary policies of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker. It is fully supported by the ICLC, although only some of the NDPC’s officials are also ICLC members, and the majority of the NDPC’s thousands of active supporters are not ICLC members.

The international alliance of anti-drug organizations is actively supported and subsidized by ICLC efforts, but only a tiny fraction of the members of these organizations are ICLC members.

The influential scientific association, the Fusion Energy Foundation, has tens of thousands of members in the USA alone, as well as a circulation of approximately 200,000 monthly. The FEF has been chiefly subsidized by or through efforts of the ICLC, and grew most rapidly as a by-product of my own campaign for the 1980 presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. Yet, only a tiny fraction of FEF members and collaborators are ICLC members.

The ICLC is involved in such projects because it not only agrees with the purposes and guiding philosophy of such associations, but their importance. Hence, there is a selective consistency in the philosophical outlook of projects which the ICLC supports, and the ICLC’s own philosophical outlook. That noted, we can focus now on the philosophical outlook of the ICLC itself.

The ICLC is presently an international academy movement, consciously modeled in intent and practice upon such precedents as Plato’s Academy at Athens, and tracing its heritage through Philo, Augustinian Christianity, the Arab Renaissance, and the 15th-century Golden Renaissance. Its members are chiefly of variously Protestant, Catholic or Jewish heritage, the USA membership representing a higher percentile of Jewish individuals than one might expect to meet outside a meeting of a B’nai B’rith Freemasonic lodge.

The ICLC has been in existence since 1973-1974, and is based chiefly in the USA, Canada, Latin America, and Western Europe, although it is actively a friend of various nations of Africa and Asia in a manner consistent with the ICLC’s commitment to a community of principle among sovereign nation-state republics. The ICLC is known chiefly for its continuing campaign for creation of a new gold-based world monetary system, designed to promote simultaneously technological progress and prosperity in the industrialized nations and enlarged flows of advanced technology of agriculture, industry and infrastructure into what are called developing nations. The ICLC otherwise focuses on problems of technology, education and statecraft subsumed under the work of such a new, gold-reserve-based world monetary order.

The ICLC grew out of earlier organizational developments of the 1966-1973 period, beginning in New York City in 1966. It is from that vantage-point that one can most quickly and accurately locate the process of development of the ICLC and the role of this writer within that process of development.

The ICLC began very simply back in 1966. This writer began teaching a recurring one-semester course in economic science and scientific method on a number of campuses, over the period 1966-1973. Out of this was assembled, initially, slightly over a dozen gifted graduate students and others, who deployed against the menace of “new leftism” being spread under the rubric of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). The tactic adopted was to penetrate SDS and to attack anarchoid forms of “new radicalism” from within SDS and its periphery. This work was essentially educational, but also took forms of tactical operations aimed to neutralize what was regarded, beginning the summer of 1968, as a neofascist menace suppurating among the admirers of the Cultural Revolution, Tom Hayden and Herbert Marcuse.

One of these 1968 undertakings was a successful deployment—by approximately 50 associates of this writer—to disrupt a planned race-riot for New York City, by neutralizing the SDS’s ability to deploy in support of an anti-Semitic racialist assault against the New York City United Federation of Teachers. From that time in 1968 to the present day, this writer and his associates have been the objects of bitter hatred among USA “leftists,” from the Communist Party USA through the left-wing socialists gathered around Tom Hayden and California’s Gov. Jerry Brown within the Democratic Party.

In the beginning, the essential orientation of the organization was premised on this writer’s contributions to economic science. The tactical orientation was this writer’s judgment that either a new, high-technology-oriented monetary order would be established or that the world would drift through successive monetary crises, into a fascist order worse than that of the Nazis, beginning with resurrection of the fascist monetarist economics doctrines of Nazi Finance Minister Hjalmar Schacht. The “new left” was seen as the new form of the fascist hooligan-force to replace the role of a Mussolini or Hitler in the future crisis.

By attacking the “new left,” the ICLC incurred counterattacks from powerful financier-related forces (e.g., the Ford Foundation) and (1968) some sections of governmental agencies (e.g., the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation) which were acting under orders of controlling agencies behind the deployment of the new leftist rabbles. Principal to these attacks on the ICLC and its predecessor-forms since 1968, has been the international resources of the London Tavistock Institute, especially that Institute’s “Russian Studies Division,” the Bertrand Russell-connected faction of the British Secret Intelligence Service. Later, beginning 1974, the genocidalist Club of Rome entered the attack on the ICLC directly and in a coordinated fashion, in cooperation with elements of the left-wing of the Socialist International. Beginning 1978, the forces of the international drug-lobby deployed massively, especially through defamatory, lying articles published in the news. media of the United States, Canada, and Italy, France, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, as well as West Germany in Europe. Beginning 1973, elements of the Soviet KGB were active, in collaboration with both the Socialist International and the London Tavistock Institute, in dirty operations against the ICLC.

It was in counterintelligence directed to investigation of such curious allies of the “new leftist hooligans” that the ICLC was led to discover, layer by layer, many interesting and important things concerning the way in which present international affairs as well as internal life of individual nations is organized from behind the scenes.

This counterintelligence capability developed chiefly as a by-product of the 1974 founding of an international news service by the ICLC, composed on the same basis as any major international newsweekly, plus an integrated organizational intelligence-counterintelligence function. It was daily, systematic, coordinated newsgathering, and related investigations, internationally, which has done the most to shape the capabilities and outlook of the ICLC.

The Content of ICLC Thinking

The point here is not only the ICLC’s means for discovering the nasty things the Jesuit Malthusians do; the point on which Stephen Mumford registers his specific complaint, is the ICLC’s capability of discovering how these Jesuits actually think—what kind of thinking governs the wickedness the Jesuits do.

The key to this knowledge is also to be found in the content of the one-semester course in economic science this writer began teaching in 1966.

This writer’s central contribution to economic science was to apply the physics of Bernhard Riemann and Georg Cantor, beginning 1952, to the previously unsolved problem of determining the correlation between rates of advancement of productive technology and rates of economic growth. With aid of this, this writer was able to demonstrate “strong” proofs from the standpoint of economic processes respecting the physical ordering of the universe.

There is nothing accidental in such a connection between Riemannian physics and the economic science associated with mercantilists and cameralists such as Leibniz, Carnot, Alexander Hamilton, and Friedrich List. Modern science, from Johannes Kepler onward, developed directly out of cameralism. When progress in economic-scientific thought collapsed after 1815, the close collaboration between Alexander von Humboldt and Lazare Carnot kept the rest of world-wide scientific progress alive in Prussia and among the collaborators of Betti and Brioschi of Cavour’s faction in Italy. The only anomalous feature of my own 1952 linking of Riemann to cameralist economic science, was the fact that such a connection was recognized almost a hundred years after such a discovery should have been made.

This bears directly on the ICLC’s special competence in matters of theology. No wishfully imagined direction from the Vatican is plausible once the true connection is identified.

What is called “modern science” is actually represented by two irreconcilable factions. The one faction, identified by such names as Kepler, Leibniz, Euler, Gauss, and Riemann, is geometric in method. The opposing faction is algebraicist or cabalistic, and is typified by such names as Descartes, Newton, Cauchy and Maxwell.

The latter current, including its British empiricist components, as well as the more directly Jesuitical Viennese-positivist and Marburg neo-Kantian components, are all products of direct Jesuitical supervision, including the case of Jesuit protégé Francis Bacon. It is correct to suspect that these differences within the ranks of science are necessary reflections of the same fundamental differences which separate Gnostics, such as the Jesuits, from Apostolic Christianity.

Modern mathematical science was founded by Johannes Kepler’s proof that the principle of the golden mean was the uniquely determining principle of composition of the orbits of the planets and moons of the solar system. That is the kind of fundamental breakthrough in scientific knowledge known variously as a “crucial experiment,” or in Riemann’s terms of reference, a “unique experiment”: a single experiment which tests one way or the other the fundamental principles of lawful ordering of the entire universe or some distinguishable large domain of that universe.

This discovery of Kepler’s was formally incomplete only on one categorical point, as Kepler himself emphasized.

Kepler proved from astrophysics the need for the development of a differential calculus, and specified the requirements of such a calculus. This challenge was essentially solved by Leibniz in a paper given to his Paris printer for publication in 1676, outlining the differential calculus eleven years before Newton’s defective version in the Principia. Leibniz grasped the fundamental principles of topology with aid of the work on integer-series by B. Pascal, gaining access to the unpublished papers of Pascal in Paris to assist him in formulating that discovery. The development of topology was consolidated by the Bernoullis and L. Euler, and furthered beyond that by the collaborators of G. Monge and L. Carnot in France, and the students of Karl Gauss in Germany. It was the unification of the work of the École Polytechnique with the Leibnizian current of Gauss in Germany, which is the basis for world-wide preeminence of German science during the 19th century. The destruction of the power of modern science is less the result of the Jesuitical philosophy of Descartes and Newton, than direct Jesuit intervention by such protégés of Abbot Moigno as Augustin Cauchy, the man who almost singlehandedly destroyed French science. (There are presently hoaxsters, identified with C. Truesdell’s History of the Exact Sciences, who are falsifying records in attempted defense of Cauchy, but the evidence of deliberate fraud in the articles being published under that sponsorship is massive and conclusive.)

The way of looking at the world typified by the scientific work of Plato, Archimedes, Cusa, Kepler, Leibniz and Riemann, is identical with the world-outlook of Philo of Alexandria and the Nicene Christian doctrine. The way of looking at the world typified by Descartes, Newton, Hegel, Cauchy, Maxwell, and Ernst Mach is not a product of scientific investigations, but of the superimposition upon science of the Gnostic dogmas of Aristotle and the cults of Mithra, Apollo-Lucifer and Isis. Mach’s world-outlook, like Adolf Hitler’s, is congruent with the Lucifer worship of the theosophist-anthroposophist allies of the Jesuits.

Therefore, as the ICLC came into direct conflict with adversaries of technological progress, the ICLC’s economic-scientific method provided an adequate basis for analyzing the governing philosophical world-outlook of the Jesuits and their accomplices.

The Pitiable Knowledge of the ‘Little Man’

The greatest problem quantitatively which the ICLC has confronted over the 1966-1981 period so indicated is not the problem represented by the evil Malthusians and their anarchist storm-troopers. The greatest problem quantitatively, is the “littleness” of spirit and intellect among the majority of the people of various nations, a majority which is otherwise still instinctively decent and moral. One is reminded, especially as “green fascists” and their liberal allies threaten to repeat the crisis of 1929-1933 in today’s Germany, of Hans Fallada’s famous book, Little Man, What Now?

Fascism threatens society not because the fascist minority is so numerous, but because the non-fascist majority of moral, decent people is as “little,” or perhaps “littler,” throughout most of the nations today as it was in Germany during the Weimar Republic. “Little” people are so busy taking care of their careers, their pensions, and the “little” matters of their immediate neighborhood and family circumstances, that their minds are too shrunken to comprehend the reality of processes unfolding on a national scale, let alone a world-scale.

The “little man” is so narrowly preoccupied with predicates of the possessive pronoun that he lacks the moral or intellectual capacity for passion in matters which he wishfully deludes himself do not directly affect his most-narrowly-defined self-interests. For such a “little man,” the world begins with his first memory of childhood consciousness, and extends chiefly to his family and friends, up to the point his last breath ends the existence of the universe for him. In brief, the pathetic “little man,” although otherwise decent and moral, has no efficient comprehension of the breadth of the present and no comprehension of—and less interest in—history.

This is key to the moral superiority of the ICLC over the leaderships of most governments and parties of the world today. We are not “little”; we situate ourselves as efficient instruments of a process of history extending, in our knowledge of history, over a span of approximately 2,500 years of Western civilization, since the period of Solon, Socrates, and Plato. We know that our mortal lives are but ephemeral moments in the breadth and duration of past, present and future, and that the proper meaning of an individual life is to contribute Good which endures beyond the range of one’s short mortal span of stuffing mashed potatoes and ice-cream into one’s maw.

We, and our mortal enemies, as typified by leading Jesuits, are both unlike the foolish “little” people. Not only are we, like our opposite numbers, the Jesuits and “black nobility” oligarchists, committed to the shape of future history over generations yet to come; we are knowledgeable that history does not begin anew with each generation. What one generation is inclined or able to accomplish is shaped over preceding generations. Only relatively smaller forces such as the ICLC and its Jesuit adversaries understand how the world actually functions. Only we, unlike small-minded “little people,” recognize that either one masters history as a history of the shaping of reality by ideas, or one is a pathetically ignorant bungler. The Jesuits, who master history from their vantage-point, and we who master the same history from the opposite standpoint, are both unlike the ignorant fellows carrying Ph.D.s in history from this or that contemporary university of miseducation. We are each working—to opposite purposes—to predetermine the shape of humanity’s future in light of knowledge gained from comprehension of civilization’s past 2,500 years.

NATO

General Alexander Haig, Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), visits NATO soldiers in the field in 1977.

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For related reasons, so-called “educated people” today are enormously more ignorant that “educated people” of a hundred years earlier. In past times, education was premised on classical education—including the classical Greek of the period from Homer through Plato. That education afforded the student a sense of history—an education which has been virtually outlawed from the modern curriculum, under the present reign of computer-scored, multiple-choice doctoral dissertations.

The news-intelligence and counterintelligence work of the ICLC has been guided to this 2,500-year basis for policy-deliberations by approaching history in the same manner one conducts a contemporary counterintelligence investigation. We have discovered what the Jesuits already knew: that today’s most powerful, opposing factions, the titanic forces shaping world-history from largely behind-the-scenes, are products of a continuing political battle, which can be traced in detail as the secret of European civilization’s history since the fourth century B.C.

The “little man,” the mere head of state, mere legislator, mere leader of a major political party, usually understands nothing of this. He is a mere, shallow pragmatist, who meddles with history without the slightest comprehension of the lawful principles to be adduced from mastery of 2,500 years of that history.

The fact that the ICLC is not a collection of well-meaning, but predominantly ignorant meddlers, as most leading political figures today are, enables the ICLC to accomplish with relatively smaller forces certain important tasks what even governing parties of nations lack the knowledge to accomplish. That is essentially the reason the Jesuits are viewing the ICLC as a special sort of danger today, why they are hoping so intensely that we are nothing more than “agents of the Vatican.” The simple, “little” politician or citizen resents the ICLC’s knowledge. “No, that is too sophisticated. You must act politically only in terms that ordinary, uneducated people can understand.” If we accepted such well-meaning but bad advice, we would be miserable failures, like virtually every leading political party of the transatlantic community of nations today.

Who Are the Jesuits, Really?

Contrary to popularized mythology, the Jesuits are neither a part of nor product of Western Christianity. The order was created at Venice during the 16th century, to be the new secret-intelligence arm of the powerful family funds of Venice. Through Venice’s control over the Hapsburg Emperor, Charles V, the Hapsburgs conquered and looted Rome in 1527 A. D., and made the Vatican virtually a prisoner of Venetian-Hapsburg policy during much of the period, until the Vatican was freed through the successful defeat of the Hapsburgs in 1653 by the successive work of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin.

Venice and Genoa are not politically, culturally, or religiously products of Western civilization. They were and remain both colonies of the Justinian faction of Byzantium, and have been, more recently together with the Venetian puppet-state of Switzerland, the capital of the Justinian faction of Byzantium ever since the Venetians’ Neoplatonic adversary, the Paleologues, rose to power in Constantinople.

Except for recurring, persisting Neoplatonic insurrections within Byzantium, the Eastern Church’s patriarchate has not been Christian since the Emperor Justinian. The Eastern, Justinian Church was developed as a form of pseudo-Christianity modeled upon the Roman Imperial mystery religions. Roman Imperial paganism and Byzantine pseudo-Christianity share the common generic name of Gnosis-Gnosticism.

Every major evil which Western European civilization has suffered since Charlemagne’s time has been a direct result of subversions of religious and political life mediated through that Venetian-centered collection of Gnostic oligarchical families. These are typified by the “black nobility” of Italy, Austro-Hungary and Russia’s “Black Hundred,” all outgrowths of the Byzantine-Venetian-Genoese deployment to establish powerful families of its faction in various parts of the world—such as the anglophile heathens of New York City’s Anglican Cathedral of St. John the Divine today.

The 15th-century Golden Renaissance enabled the Augustinian Neoplatonic faction to undermine and weaken the corruption which the Venetians and Genoese had established under the auspices of the 13th and 14th centuries’ pro-Aristotle inquisitions. Under this specific circumstance, Venice created a new, more rigidly-designed new order, the Jesuits.

Through the military subjugation of the Papacy in 1527, Venice was situated to impose the Jesuits upon the Vatican as an autonomous power within the Church under its own “Black Pope.” This new order, the Jesuits, was based on Gnostic religious doctrine, and modeled, as a secret-intelligence service of Venice and the Hapsburgs, on the Cult of Apollo at Delphi. Hence, the Jesuits themselves emphasize that their method is the “Delphic method,” the method of sophistry developed by Aristotle’s masters up through the fourth century B.C.

To understand the mind of leading Jesuits, one must focus upon the great struggle of the fourth century B.C.

On one side were aligned forces of republicanism, guided jointly by Plato’s Academy at Athens, and the Cyrenaic Temple of Amon, the two institutions which cosponsored and guided Alexander the Great. On the opposite side were the Magi of Mesopotamia and the cult of Thebes, with the Delphi Temple of Apollo the principal arm of the Magi (Lucifer-worshippers) in Greece and controlling the Latin city of Rome.

The policy of the Magi was known then as the proposal to create what was termed the “Western Division of the Persian Empire.” Philip of Macedon was offered a world-empire to the west of the Euphrates, on condition that he subjugate Greece and cooperate to place the world under a social order called the “Persian Model” and otherwise called the “Oligarchical Model.” The Cult of Apollo, and its agent Aristotle, were key parts of this plot.

The death of Philip, and the Athens Academy’s and Amon’s successful cooperation to bring Alexander to power, and to destroy the Persian Empire, delayed the “Oligarchical” one-world empire effort for almost 300 years, until the rise of Rome to assume the role earlier intended for Philip of Macedon.

We, the forces of Western civilization, have beaten back every effort to resurrect the Roman model of Malthusian one-world order until now. This success is chiefly the result of the work of the Augustinians, of Charlemagne, of the Hohenstaufen, and the Golden Renaissance. The defeat of Britain by the American Revolution was the key event which tilted the balance against 18th-century plans to establish such a new Roman Empire. The force of industrial-capitalist development prevented the Holy Alliance from being consolidated as the kernel of such a new Roman Empire. Now, the damnable “Society of Judas” and the British are back at the same evil effort again, just as the homosexual Pre-Raphaelite cult of Oxford’s John Ruskin and Cambridge’s Benjamin Jowett proposed during the last century.

Either we rise to crush this spawn of the ancient Lucifer-cult today—and not merely in its theosophist-anthroposophist excrescences, or civilization will not survive. Either we defeat the Jesuits and their British allies, or we as a civilization have demonstrated by our unwillingness to do so that we have lost the moral fitness to survive.

The Present Dark Age

The rise of the “post-industrial society” cult over the past 20 years, with its “green fascist” rabble of today, merely signifies that civilization is now approaching the fag-end of a moral and intellectual decay which has been in progress approximately a hundred years, since approximately 1871-1876. If one understands why that conception of the past century’s history is not only correct but necessary for practice, one understands how and why the ICLC functions as it does.

True, there has been significant technological progress over the past hundred years, and some important improvement in the political and material conditions of life of sections of the human population. The institutions of cultural and technological progress set into motion during the period 1653-1871 have continued to function, although with eroding efficiency, up into the early 1960s. It is only during the 1957-1981 period that civilization overall has slipped into a condition of accelerating absolute decay. It is that erosion of institutions on which competent analysis must focus.

The defeat of the Hapsburgs in 1653 unleashed a generally upward development in European civilization, except in Britain and the Netherlands, where the Genoese and Venetian masters consolidated their grip during the 1660-1689 period of the British monarchical restoration. The high point of this upsurge was the successful establishment of the United States under Federalist principles in 1789. The achievements of the American Revolution threatened to ignite a general upsurge of republicanism throughout much of the world.

Apart from such subversive Jacobin collaborators of the British Secret Intelligence Service as Thomas Jefferson, the young United States was a success. The British and Jesuits, together with the Order of Malta, worked mightily to subvert and defeat the influence of the American Revolution, conspiring to destroy the United States at some early time. The British side of this was centered in the person of Lord Shelbourne and the British East India Company—the long, evil ministry of William Pitt the Younger. The allies of Pitt in France and Switzerland were typified by the Duke of Orleans, Jacques Necker, and Necker’s notorious daughter, the Madame de Stael. These combined forces, relying largely upon the Jesuits, created Jacobinism and the Jacobin Terror of Robespierre and British agents Danton and Marat. The decapitation of France by the Jacobin Terror had effects on French civilization which could not be adequately reversed by the noble efforts of Gaspard Monge and Lazare Carnot. With the defeat of Napoleonic France, the Jesuit agent Cauchy was sent into France under Orleans and British patronage to destroy French science. Cauchy largely succeeded, with agents such as Leopold Kronecker and Richard Dedekind later spreading Cauchy’s mind-destroying poison into Germany.

Except for the brief efforts and contributions associated with Gabriel Hanotaux and the work of Charles de Gaulle, France did not recover from the cultural disaster of the period 1815-1851.

Science, exiled from France, moved to Prussia under the patronage of Alexander von Humboldt. The industrialization of the United States, Germany, northern Italy, Japan and Czar Alexander’s Russia, up through the period 1871-1876, established the cultural, scientific and industrial institutions of modern European civilization.

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln, by joint efforts of the British Secret Intelligence Service and Georgetown-based Jesuits, enabled the United States to be subverted from within, and the treasonous Specie Resumption Act of 1876-1879 to be enacted and implemented—placing the major component of U. S. credit and debt at the mercy of the City of London and British agents of influence such as Belmont and Morgan. Bismarck secured the unification of Germany by concessions to London and Vienna (Venice-Switzerland); Jesuits, including some in Protestant disguises such as Friedrich Lange and Max Weber, or Kronecker at Berlin, were permitted to run amok in Germany, harassing German science to the point that Felix Klein and his associates maintained progress only by a tiring, rearguard defense against evils typified by Bertrand Russell and the Viennese hoaxster, Ernst Mach. Since World War I, civilization has been rotting away. It has been a eunuch’s culture: the old eunuch has still some of his skills, but not the power to reproduce his kind. As the viable institutions from the past crumble into age and senility, there is no net replacement for what civilization has thus lost.

In this circumstance, well-meaning fellows advise the ICLC to be “less abrasive,” to limit itself to those tried-and-tested rules of political advancement which many have employed over past decades. We reject such well-meaning advice, and rightly so. The fact—the simple fact—is that it is the result of the widespread practice of such tried-and-tested rules which has brought civilization to the present brink of collapse. Either we break with such tried-and-tested rules, or we all go down to Hell together, as the wage we earn for clinging to tried-and-true practices which have led us into this mess.

Get out of the foxholes and hit the enemy on the flank! It is not sufficient to be aggressive. It is necessary to know where and how to strike.

Go back to basics. Go back to those principles which saved humanity from the moral suicide of Roman Imperial law and culture, from the 14th-century Dark Age, from the Jesuit terror which erupted during the 1527-1653 Hapsburg looting of Europe. What are those principles of action which have been proven—over 2,500 years to date—the only efficient modes of action by which mankind can lift itself out of the hell of a new dark age? Only those rules can save us from the nightmare of Friedmanite fascism and its “green fascist” storm-troopers of today.

In the dialogues of Plato, in the Nicene doctrine, in the writings of St. Augustine, in the great works of the Golden Renaissance, there is repeatedly demonstrated that the principles of natural law associated with the conception of imago vivo Dei is the only means by which humanity can escape from the kind of Inferno to which the “Society of Judas” and its accomplices seek to condemn mankind.

It is the principle of reason (Logos) expressed through technological progress in human productive labor, combined with lawful respect for the implicit divinity of the human individual: It is these ideas and related ideas, which alone can enable humanity to survive.

Humanity can not survive if the leadership of the fight against the Gnostics is left to the judgment of those “little men” who dominate governments and parties of most nations today. The ICLC is the mediation for the effective deployment of those ideas and judgments which the “little men” of government lack the moral and intellectual development to originate without ICLC guidance.

The ICLC is the force to lead in “kicking against the pricks,” to force the truth through, even where “little men” find the truth unpleasantly abrasive. For example, you can not tolerate either Alexander Haig or Paul A. Volcker and not be an accomplice of a greater genocide than Adolf Hitler accomplished. That is considered intolerably abrasive in many quarters, but it is the pure and simple truth.

Stephen Mumford is right in one thing: I am his enemy, and he is mine.

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II. Physical Economy

LAROUCHE PAC WEBCAST

Lunar Settlement ‘Before Decade Is Out’

Trump Channels Kennedy, LaRouche

This is the edited transcript of the LaRouche PAC Friday Webcast of April 5, 2019. A video is available.

LPAC-TV

Left: Bruce Director; right: Kesha Rogers

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Matthew Ogden: Good afternoon! It is April 5, 2019. My name is Matthew Ogden, and you’re joining us for our LaRouche PAC weekly broadcast here at larouchepac.com. With me in the studio is Bruce Director, a colleague of mine; and we have the honor of having Kesha Rogers join us via video from Houston, Texas. Hi, Kesha, how are you?

Kesha Rogers: Good morning!

Ogden: For our viewers who may not know Kesha, she ran for Congress twice in Texas, achieved the Democratic nomination for House of Representatives twice, two elections in a row. She also ran for Senate and forced the Senate election in Texas to a run-off vote. Kesha has championed the return of man to the Moon and to Mars, and the revival of the manned space program in the United States, for years. We’re here to have a very exciting and fun discussion about the prospects for that. As Kennedy said, “before the decade is out,” maybe this time we will have a manned colony on the Moon.

Political developments over the last two weeks have been very exciting, and have moved very rapidly. Obviously, everybody knows that the summary report of the Mueller investigation has come out of the Attorney General’s office, and William Barr has said definitively, no collusion, no obstruction. What did Trump do as soon as that news came out? Well, he boldly moved to initiate a new era in space exploration in the United States, to channel the optimism unleashed with the end of this Mueller investigation into a new era of optimism for science, technology, and space exploration here in the United States and abroad.

White House Fact Sheet: ‘Boldly Go’

Here, just very quickly before I introduce Kesha, this is what President Trump had to say. On March 26, the White House issued a fact sheet titled, “President Donald J. Trump Is Boldly Putting Americans Back on the Moon.” I’ll just read it:

This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprint, we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars and perhaps, someday, to many worlds beyond.

—President Donald J. Trump

The details follow:

ACCELERATING AMERICA’S SPACE EXPLORATION: President Donald J. Trump is setting a bold goal to put Americans back on the Moon by 2024.

• President Trump has received five recommendations, unanimously approved by his National Space Council, to accelerate America’s space exploration program.

• President Trump also received four recommendations on streamlining export control regulations that followed a year-long review.

• The NASA Administrator will provide an update on the implementation of Space Policy Directive-1 (SPD-1) and the recommendations at the next Space Council meeting.

• The United States will seek to land on the Moon’s South Pole by 2024, establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon by 2028, and chart a future path for Mars exploration.

• NASA’s lunar presence will focus on science, resource management, and risk reduction for future missions to Mars.

• NASA will create a Moon-to-Mars Mission Directorate and make all necessary efforts to achieve Exploration Mission-1, a foundational uncrewed mission around the Moon.

• Exploration Mission-1 will take place no later than 2020 and a crewed mission around the Moon, Exploration Mission-2, will take place no later than 2022.

• NASA will unleash American industry, including through public-private partnerships, to enhance innovation and the sustainability of its space activities.

• To implement SPD-1, NASA will continue to improve its structure and management, and improve cost and schedule performance, seeking legislative authorization as necessary.

• The United States will engage with international partners to enable a sustainable lunar exploration and development program.

DARING AGAIN: President Trump is building a space program worthy of our great Nation and the American spirit.

• An American has not walked on the Moon in 47 years, but President Trump is working to change that.

• To achieve this goal, President Trump is taking action to ensure that American astronauts get to their destination quickly and sustainably.

REIGNITING AMERICA’S SPACE LEGACY: President Trump is keeping his promise to restore America’s proud legacy of leadership in space.

• These recommendations follow President Trump’s bold call for America to go back to the Moon and establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars.

• In December 2017, President Trump signed SPD-1, “Reinvigorating America’s Human Space Exploration Program.”

• The President’s Space Policy calls for NASA to lead an innovative space program with commercial and international partners.

• Americans will return to the Moon for long-term exploration, followed by missions to Mars and beyond.

• President Trump has signed three additional SPDs to restore American leadership in space.

So, Kesha, what do you think about that?

Space Cooperation or Else a War Policy

Rogers: I am extremely excited. This is a breakthrough development, and as someone who has been a strong proponent and advocate for our manned space program here in Houston, and as someone who has been working for many years in promoting the return of our space program to greatness, I am ecstatic about the developments and the direction we’re going in.

We saw in the past administration under the war policy of President Obama, the policy of “been there, done that, we don’t need to get back to the Moon.” All of that has now become a thing of the past. This President has redirected the country in the direction of a real mission orientation, that the space program is going to be the driver for international cooperation and for the future progress and development of mankind throughout our Solar System. Going back to the Moon is going to be the proving ground.

In a dramatic follow-up to his 2017 Space Policy Directive 1, President Trump declared that we were going to go back to the Moon within five years and establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon by 2028. We’re going to return astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972.

Going back to the Moon in five years is a big undertaking, but at the same time, we’ve done this before. NASA technology, the technology from our international partners, from our commercial partners, is absolutely there, and we can accomplish this goal. It’s going to take vision, mission, and determination as the NASA administrator James Bridenstine recently said in a discussion with NASA employees on the question of “Can we meet the deadlines? Can we meet the goals of funding, financing?” This is also going to take bipartisan leadership, it’s going to take a commitment. You can’t have a stalemate in Congress, you can’t have a Continuing Resolution.

Slides from NASA Video

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As Kennedy said, resources and the talents must be channeled to meet these goals. Today we have an even bolder initiative, but I think given the moment we’re in right now, this is where our nation and the world should be going in terms of cooperation.

As you said, Matt, on the political situation, we are really at a turning point. There is a crossroads before us. Either we’re going to go with this war policy of nuclear annihilation—which has been promoted by some such as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who just recently spoke with Trump and said our enemies are Russia and China,— We shouldn’t be working with these people.

Contrast that to the recent remarks of Dmitry Rogozin, the Director of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, who said, Roscosmos has a great relationship and partnership with the United States in space development, and that positive relationship needs to continue. So, despite those who want to push war and do not want to see this cooperation for human progress, we have to make a determination that our future is going to lie in something greater and something more positive for the next generations. This is the way to go, most definitely.

Timeline of NASA’s Moon-Mars Mission

I want to take a few moments here to give you an outline of the timeline that’s being proposed right now for these next five years for developing the platform for getting to the Moon by 2024. I want to quote from Bridenstine again as he developed the plan to escalate the President’s call to get to the Moon by 2024. He said:

President Donald Trump has asked NASA to accelerate our plans to return to the Moon and to land humans on the surface again by 2024. We will go with innovative new technologies and systems to explore more locations across the surface than was ever thought possible. This time, when we go to the Moon, we will stay. And then we will use what we learn on the Moon to take the next giant leap—sending astronauts to Mars.

NASA is so excited right now; they’re putting out quite a number of beautiful videos to inspire people, showing the innovative technology that’s already underway right now to get us back to the Moon. I want to show you an example right now. It’s a 1-minute, 45-second NASA video, “We Will Go Forward to the Moon with Technology.” [Plays the video.]

Rogers: That is very inspiring; it brings tears to your eyes. This is not just something that is just happening right now—I’m inspired because this is a result of a life of work by Lyndon LaRouche, what he dedicated his life to, to a science-driver mission orientation for the nation. We’re going to speak more about this. Consider the work that Mr. LaRouche has done for a Moon-Mars mission orientation over the decades, and now that Mr. LaRouche has passed on, you can see that his works are being realized.

The idea of a Moon-Mars mission has to be centered in scientific and technological progress to advance all facets of our economy and our society. This is the direction we see the world going if we continue to commit ourselves to that direction, contrary to the policies of zero-growth or policies that stifle human progress. So, this is very inspiring.

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SLS, Orion and the Gateway

I recently had a chance to tour the NASA Johnson Space Center’s Orion program and some of the other programs. I just want to use some of the pictures I took to illustrate the timeline for this 2024 mission.

FIGURE 1

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What you’re seeing here [Figure 1] is from the Lunar and Planetary Conference that I attended with my colleague Megan Beets. After the 2017 announcement by President Trump, reigniting a Moon-Mars program and his issuing Space Policy Directive 1, the first activity will involve commercial Moon deliveries in 2019. NASA has issued contracts to nine commercial companies to carry payloads to the Moon ahead of a human lunar landing. ORBITBeyond is one of those companies. So that’s the first step.

FIGURE 2

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Next, we have a picture [Figure 2] of the Space Launch System (SLS), the rocket that’s going to carry the Orion spacecraft with the astronauts in it. The Orion spacecraft holds up to four astronauts.

In 2020, you’ll have an Exploration Mission, or EM-1; that’s going to use the Space Launch System and the Orion for the first with an uncrewed mission to lunar orbit. The second time SLS goes up, in 2022, it will be with a crewed Orion spacecraft.

FIGURE 3

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This is a mock-up of the Orion [Figure 3], which will sit on top of the Space Launch System. That will take the astronauts to the Moon. So the second launch will take our astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft around the Moon for the first time in 50 years.

FIGURE 4

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This was quite exciting—and fun. This is me inside the Orion mock-up at NASA [Figure 4]. We got a demonstration of how this works. It’s the two of us on the lower level, and then right above us, you might see some shoes; there are two people above us there. That’s the inside of the Orion mock-up.

The next step, in 2022, will be the launch of the first Gateway element. The Gateway is a platform that will have an elliptical orbit around the Moon. It is not a space station; it is smaller than the space station. But it will be a docking point for the Orion. Once there is a Moon lander, it will have an ascent module—a propulsion system—so the astronauts don’t get stranded on the Moon. The ascent module will have a small rocket that takes them up to an orbiter, or to the Gateway, from any position on the Moon.

We experienced a virtual reality demonstration of the Gateway project, by putting on goggles that put you directly in the prototype of the Gateway—so that you can see what’s going on inside of it.

The technologies and the advancements that we have right now, that allow us to look at what is going on and have it demonstrated to you, are quite incredible. Visitors, ordinary people, can get right inside of these projects and see exactly how the Gateway will work. It’s pretty fascinating.

FIGURE 5

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On the screen is a simulation of a lander [Figure 5] that I had a chance to get into and do a test docking. It shows you how the spacecraft will dock, how it will land. These are some of the projects they have going on at NASA.

FIGURE 6

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The Vision of LaRouche and Ehricke

Here you see, “The Development of Cislunar Space” [Figure 6], which illustration was created by Megan Beets and the LaRouche science team. We’ve used this to show the development of cislunar space as we start to send up commercial flights into lunar orbit; taking payloads, as we put up satellite systems; as we put the Gateway around the Moon and start to develop more technologies. This is what we’re heading towards; this is what it’s going to look like. This was the vision of Mr. LaRouche, of Krafft Ehricke, the great space pioneer. This is a schematic of what we should be doing in space.

Finally, the Gateway itself, just to finish the timeline here. The first elements of the Gateway—the power and propulsion elements—will be launched by a private rocket in December 2022. This is the timeline; it might move up, but it’s going to run on solar electric power.

Finally, in 2023, prior to landing astronauts on the Moon by 2024, NASA is going to put up “mobility platforms”—science and exploration rovers that NASA is working on with commercial partners and industry. These rovers will be going to the location on the Moon that we’re going to focus on, that the President has commissioned, and that was just announced by Vice President Pence at the National Space Council—the South Pole of the Moon.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

The existence of significant amounts of water at the lunar South Pole was a discovery crucial for establishing a permanent presence. Shown here is the South Pole as imaged by the Clementine Mission in 1994.

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We already know that there is water there, volatiles on the Moon that would help us to have long-duration sustainability on the Moon; water for oxygen, for drinking, for food sources, and so forth that we could use to develop on the Moon. As Administrator Bridenstine said, the exciting thing that was announced by the Trump administration is that when we get back to the Moon in 2024, we’re going to be sending our first woman astronaut to the Moon, and our next man to the Moon. So, that’s very exciting, and as I said, this is for long-term duration and stay.

We have a very optimistic vision in front of us right now.

Ogden: You mentioned that this is really the fruit of what Lyndon LaRouche worked for, for 30 years or more: scientific progress, progress for mankind.

A Return of Optimism for Progress

Bruce Director: As Kesha was talking, what struck me was that it’s been 47 years since man has been on the Moon. No one under the age of 55 or so—the vast majority of the world’s population—has a living memory of the Moon being the province of mankind, other than an object we observe from a distance. Think about when that Moon walk took place—1972. That was right after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system where free trade money came into existence, but also all the crazy ideas that are plaguing us today—environmentalism, zero-growth, population reduction, the notion of man as an unnatural intervener in the environment. We have had generations now of people who really have not lived with the kind of optimism and progress that was really unleashed by the Kennedy mission to put a man on the Moon.

This optimism was not limited to the United States. We’re going to be celebrating in just a few months the anniversary of the first manned landing on the Moon in July 1969—the most-watched and listened-to event in world history. It wasn’t just in the United States that people paid attention to it, but in every little village and town, even the remotest locations in parts of the world which were completely underdeveloped at that time, people gathered around their radios and televisions to follow the coverage of a man landing on the Moon. This was a global event; it was an achievement for all mankind.

We’ve had some reprieve from the pessimism in the recent period with the initiatives of China and its success with the Chang’e mission Moon landing. Also, the continuing collaboration between the United States and Russia in space, but also the entry of other countries.

Water on the Moon is Crucial

Just to put a point on that, why are we going to the South Pole of the Moon? Because the South Pole is where there’s water. Until 2007 or so, it was believed that there was no water on the Moon, that the Moon was bone dry. How did we find water on the Moon?

Evidence of water was first discovered by NASA’s Lunar Prospector in 1999, but Indian scientists, who sent up the Chandrayaan-1 probe in 2008—it exposed sub-surface soil at the lunar South Pole—confirmed it. Then in 2009, NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), discovered that water was not scarce at the South Pole, amounting to about one percent of the regolith! So that changed the whole conception of what we could do there. This is an international effort, and I was very happy to see that in Trump’s statement, he mentioned international cooperation.

Going back to the 1960s and 1970s, when the commitment to space exploration and lunar development was being dumped by President Jimmy Carter and the pessimism was sneaking in, LaRouche realized that that had to be reversed. The strategic situation at that time was far different than it is today, being dominated by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, which was being manipulated by the British Empire around the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction.

The way to keep world peace, it was thought, was to make sure that between the United States and the Soviet Union, each side could annihilate the other. That gave the British the opportunity to launch all kinds of regional wars and so forth. That, I think, also contributed a lot to the pessimism. Especially in my generation, we grew up with the idea that a nuclear war within an hour’s time could annihilate all of civilization. It doesn’t exactly engender a belief that you should have a big commitment to the future.

LaRouche addressed that, and he addressed it in the way that was quite unique at the time. Instead of trying to rail against what was bad, he proposed what was good. It eventually came into this idea of the Strategic Defense Initiative, which was to put the scientific capability of the United States, and ultimately in collaboration with our adversary at the time, the Soviet Union, to develop new defenses based on new physical principles which would make nuclear war obsolete. This was adopted by President Reagan in 1983, and in the ensuing period, LaRouche put out many proposals, one of which was a 1984 memorandum for cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union based on mutual cooperation in the development of space.

LaRouche’s Ideas on Space Now in Play

Ogden: Let’s look at Mr. LaRouche’s 1984 “Draft Memorandum of Agreement Between the U.S. and the USSR.”

In Article 1, General Conditions for Peace, he states:

The political foundation for durable peace must be: (a) the unconditional sovereignty of each and all nation-states; and (b) cooperation among sovereign nation-states to the effect of promoting unlimited opportunities to participate in the benefits of technological progress to the mutual benefit of each and all.

The most crucial feature of present implementation of such a policy of durable peace, is a profound change in the monetary, economic, and political relations between the dominant powers and those relatively subordinated nations often classed as ‘developing nations.’ Unless the inequities lingering in the aftermath of modern colonialism are progressively remedied, there can be no durable peace on this planet.

Insofar as the United States and Soviet Union [or Russia, today] acknowledge the progress of the productive powers of labor throughout the planet to be in the vital strategic interests of each and both, the two powers are bound to that degree and in that way by a common interest. This is the kernel of the political and economic policies of practice indispensable to the fostering of durable peace between those two powers.

Concluding Article 6, he says explicitly that this has to be done with space exploration:

To lend force to this policy, the powers agree to establish new institutions of cooperation between themselves and other nations in development of these new areas of scientific breakthrough for application of exploration of space.

To this purpose, the powers agree to establish at the earliest possible time, institutions for cooperation in scientific exploration of space, and to also co-sponsor treaty agreements protecting national and multinational programs for the colonization of the Moon and Mars.

At some early time, the powers shall enter into deliberations, selecting dates for initial manned colonization of the Moon and Mars, and the establishment of international space stations on the Moon and in the orbits of Moon and Mars; stations to be maintained by and in the common interest and use of space parties of all nations.

The powers jointly agree upon the adoption of two tasks as the common interests of mankind, as well as the specific interest of each of the two powers: (1) the establishment of full economic equity respecting the conditions of individual life and all nations of this planet during a period of not more than 50 years; and (2) man’s exploration and colonization of nearby space as the continuing common objective and interest of mankind during and beyond the completion of the first task. The adoption of these two working goals as the common task and respective interest in common of the two powers and other cooperating nations constitutes the general point of reference for erosion of the potential political and economic causes of warfare between the powers.

Solutions Exist Only at a Higher Level

Director: That’s quite beautiful. You can see that LaRouche, in true statesman-like fashion, proposed a solution to what at that time was an existential crisis for mankind. He didn’t try and address it within the parameters that were being set by the cause and the perpetrators of that existential crisis, which was the imperial system associated with the British Empire. He proposed to get out of that completely by establishing a basis for cooperation among the two leading nuclear powers at that time for a new development on a much higher level.

In a sense, it’s typical of the greatest ways to approach policy of the American System. Think back to Alexander Hamilton. In the early days of the republic, the nation was confronted with major crises. Each solution he proposed was not a solution to any particular crisis, but the solution was found in establishing a general principle that would make such crises impossible, or nonexistent. That was the same approach that Lincoln took, and Franklin Roosevelt in the Depression and the war period.

That’s what LaRouche was doing in his Memo. He was, of course, very active at the time, not just in the United States, but also in Europe, Japan, India, throughout the world. Organizing scientific leaders, military leaders, industrial leaders behind this idea.

A year later, in August 1985, he proposed a new program called, “A Private Initiative for Moon-Mars Development,” that was just reprinted in EIR. I strongly recommend that people read it in conjunction with his 1984 Memorandum, because he lays out exactly how this can be done, which includes, most importantly, a mobilization of private industry in the United States for development of space and the relevant technologies.

This is very important right now in terms of the current proposal by President Trump. If you set a mission and a deadline, as Trump has done, by cutting the timeline for putting a man on the Moon in half from ten years to five, at this point, it up-ends all the usual bureaucratic and procedural impediments to getting something done.

We have a wealth of capability, not just in the United States, but also in other countries—especially Russia and China, but also India and Japan and other countries which have developed advanced technologies, to research and develop and create new capabilities—new materials, new types of propulsion systems; most emphatically a fusion propulsion system, on which there is already research being done in the United States and other countries; nuclear-powered rockets, other types of technologies in terms of miniaturization technologies and so forth which just create the ability to do today things which would have seemed impossible.

AEC/NASA

The NERVA-XE, the first ground experimental nuclear thermal rocket engine undergoing testing in 1967.

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Go to the Air and Space Museum here in Washington, or in Houston, and look at what our astronauts went to the Moon in. The capsules they went to the Moon in look like a bunch of tin cans held together by rivets. There’s more computing power in your cell phone today than was available to all of NASA during the entire Apollo project. We sent men to the Moon using slide rules. Now that’s a testament to creativity.

Ogden: They were up there navigating with sextants because their navigation systems went out.

Director: I know! That’s a testament to their creativity, but that’s not to say that we should not use advanced technologies right now. Although, it’s probably a good idea to be trained in the use of the sextant in case you need it.

Mobilize the American People!

So, we’re really on the cusp right now. If we have a mission orientation, we can break through all these impediments. And you can see this just in the last week or so. Since Trump’s announcement, NASA Administrator James Bridenstine held a town meeting for the NASA employees, and tried to cut through the justifiable pessimism that may exist. Referring to the famous Peanuts cartoon, Lucy has pulled the football away from them too many times; and they want to make sure we’re really going to do this. He said, yeah, we’re really going to do it, because President Trump wants to do it.

It helps us that President Trump is pretty passionate about this; but we have to mobilize America around this. That’s really our job here at LaRouche PAC. We’re getting reports, by talking about this program, that there’s a huge amount of support for it. People are really hungry to have a mission like this. And comparing it to John F. Kennedy was an important reference by President Trump.

You mentioned the supportive statement by the Director General of Roscosmos, the Russian NASA, Rogozin. We have already a potential for collaboration with China, which would require getting rid of this ridiculous Wolf Amendment, which prohibits NASA from working directly with the Chinese. Already there are some back-channel and back-door ways that collaboration is going on, but the outright prohibition should just be swept aside.

With a mission like this, as LaRouche said back in the 1980s, you can reorganize world affairs. It’s only with a mission like this that you can do it. So, we should stop trying to tinker here and tinker there on the lower level of problems that get in the way, and really just put the whole country behind this concept.

Cooperation with Competition

The other thing I’d say is that there’s a certain amount of competition at play here. Pence says America is going to be first in space. Well, the Russians want to be first in space, and the Chinese want to be first in space, and the Indians want to be first in space. It’s not bad that everybody wants to be first in space; you can get a little bit of competition going here. It provides the basis for collaboration, because in case you hadn’t noticed, space is pretty big. There’s really enough room for everybody and I don’t see any borders on any map you want to draw—a two-dimensional or three-dimensional map of space. I don’t see any borders, and you can’t extend the air space of a terrestrial country beyond the atmosphere.

So, there’s plenty of room out there, and plenty of need, and I really think this is the basis on which we could knit together a completely new set of relations among nations.

Ogden: That 1985 article by LaRouche, “Private Initiative for Colonizing the Moon and Mars,” was followed by a broader paper that he wrote for Fusion magazine in 1986, “The Scientific Technology Needed to Colonize Mars.” He begins the 1985 article by saying:

It can be safely estimated, that during the coming fifty years or longer, all scientific and technological progress will be shaped primarily by the interrelationship among three presently well-defined frontiers of scientific research: (1) Controlled thermonuclear fusion, (2) coherently directed electromagnetic impulses, and (3) optical biophysics. Advances in other classifications of technological progress will be indispensable auxiliaries to the application of the three primary classes of developments, but the overall technological progress of mankind will be directed and bounded by the advances effected in these three cited, primary classifications.

The implications of these primary technologies are shown most immediately, most clearly, and most exhaustively, by examining the interdependent role all three perform together in interplanetary colonization.

He said that’s what we should now define as “science.” When we say the word “science,” we should mean Moon-Mars interplanetary colonization. He said that maybe later we can get to terra-forming of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. In this paper—in 1985—LaRouche set 2010 as a goal for colonization of Mars. We missed that goal, but later in the article he says, “Today, we can foresee the clear possibility that colonies totaling millions of persons will exist on Mars by the middle of the coming century.”

NASA

The Lunar Module Eagle on the Moon in July 1969 as part of the Apollo 11 mission.

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Director: Let me just point out two things. One is that LaRouche was optimistic there in terms of timeframe, and the official NASA timeline for programs back in the late 1960s, during the Apollo program, was even more optimistic than that. Yet it’s 47 years since we’ve been on the Moon; we’re really way behind where we could have been.

The other thing I’ll point out here, which is I think a perfectly good irony, is that LaRouche made this a major part of his Presidential campaigns, both in 1984 and in 1988, most famously making a half-hour nationwide television address called “The Woman on Mars.” LaRouche’s enemies were quite freaked out about that. The population really responded to it well—especially young people. But he was ridiculed, and slanders and attacks ensued on LaRouche and the legal cases. One of the big slanders was, “LaRouche, he’s against the Queen of England, and he wants to colonize Mars.” He was ridiculed in the mass media for saying this. Now, you can see the real small-mindedness of the people who attacked LaRouche on these grounds. Today, Mars colonization is what any competent nation or person would want to do.

Stories Our Grandchildren Will Tell Us

Rogers: I was just thinking about what NASA Administrator Bridenstine said to the NASA employees. It was the attitude that “failure is not an option”; that not getting this done is not an option. This is going to be a story that we’re going to tell to our children and grandchildren. And with all of the questions about budgets and so forth, and achieving this goal when we’ve seen so many projects that have been put on hold and have been stopped. He was very optimistic about the fact that we have a President who is determined to provide leadership and a vision.

He said that we have to put everything we have into going full-speed ahead with this objective, to meet this objective and make it a reality. That’s the 2024 return to the Moon with American astronauts; our first female and our next male astronauts on the Moon. We have to make this commitment. Bridenstine said that we don’t know where the world will be in 2024; but what we do know is that we have an objective and we have a mission to meet. The reality is that this is the direction that the world should be going in, in 2024; and you just think about it, as he says, we’re going to have an amazing story to tell our children and our grandchildren. They will have an amazing future to look forward to.

Director: If we do this, not only will we have a lot of stories to tell our grandchildren, but our grandchildren will have a lot of stories to tell us!

Ogden: Absolutely! So, thank you so much, Kesha and Bruce.

Rogers: Thank you! I’m just an ordinary citizen doing this. More citizens have to take up this fight and this mission.

What Is America’s National Credit?

Can We Use It for Real Economic Growth?

Review by Paul Gallagher

PART 1 OF A TWO-PART SERIES.

A Resource of War—The Credit of the Government Made Immediately Available: History of the Legal Tender Paper Money Issued During the Great Rebellion, Being a Loan without Interest and a National Currency

By Elbridge Gerry Spaulding

252 pages, paperback, $14.95

London: Forgotten Books, 2018 (First published in Buffalo, New York, 1869)

April 5—Once again in March, a region of the United States has been devastated “by nature” because of the simple failure or refusal to build major systems of basic infrastructure—planned many decades ago. This is the fourth time since 1993 that the Upper Midwest of the country has been overwhelmed by massive flooding of the Missouri and Upper Mississippi basins, with widespread loss of human life, killing of millions of livestock, loss of stored crops, and harm to thousands of square miles of farmland and rural infrastructure. Even more heavy rain and flooding is forecast over the next months. The flood-control system for the Missouri and Upper Mississippi to prevent this mass destruction of life and wealth, was engineered out and proposed for the Army Corps of Engineers in 1944! As with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), it would have cost a fraction of the wealth that floods have now destroyed.

America’s unending failure to renew or even repair its economic infrastructure since the early- to mid-20th century has become a national crisis. Since the financial crash in 2007-08, trillions of dollars have been printed and made available to Wall Street and City of London banks for their capital and liquidity. Not only has this denied national credit to the economy; it has made the crisis of our deindustrialized economy worse, and now threatens a new Wall Street financial blowout. Claims that these same banks are ready to “invest in infrastructure” are a joke; they demand 10-12% annual return to do so.

Legislators constantly claim—even as they finish making impassioned pleas for new infrastructure!—that “We don’t know what the source of funds for this could be.”

Everyone, from the engineering experts to the informed average citizen, knows that the more-or-less immediate investment needed, if we’re going to have a high-productivity industrial economy again, is counted in trillions. Yet elected officials are unable to guess where investments in the low hundreds of billions, even over a decade, could come from.

Just imagine what would happen if they should suddenly be given the task of funding a war for the very survival of America. That is what the author of this “forgotten” book succeeded in doing.

CC

New home construction and sales are at 1995 levels. Meanwhile, construction, mortgage, and rental costs have all risen dramatically.

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Moreover, it is not just basic economic infrastructure that needs to be renewed; it is manufacturing and industry, in quantity and quality. The United States economy has five million fewer workers producing goods than it did four decades ago in 1978. Industrial production today is at the same level as it was in 2008. Electricity generation is below that of 2007. Agricultural production is equal to the level of 2004, according to the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service. Annual new home construction and sales are at the level of 1995, according to the Commerce Department; costs and rent have risen 33% from 2007 to 2017, right through an economic collapse in 2008-10 and glacial “recovery.”

National Credit

It seems that at the most crucial times in its history, the United States has found the national credit to accomplish such things; yet now, it can not, at least as far as elected officials can tell.

By credit, we understand the ability to stimulate productive activity and increase living standards by making loans, or loans combined with grants, or making expenditures and investments which foster such activity. By national credit, we understand the capacity of the whole nation to afford such a stimulus, as carried out through its Federal government.

And we can make the assumption that national credit has to give that stimulus through the use of the national currency. There can be only one national currency in a nation with a healthy economic system, and it must be controlled nationally. The U.S. Constitution prohibits the states—much less local entities—from issuing “bills of credit” to circulate as money, while it allows this to the Federal government.

The great economist and founding editor of EIR, Lyndon LaRouche, stated the following principle in his 1985 article, “Private Initiative for Colonizing the Moon and Mars,” and similarly at other times:

Whenever the state fails to exert a monopoly of responsibility for issuance and regulation of its currency, disaster ensues. Basic economic infrastructure, such as large-scale water-management, general transportation, production and distribution of energy, general communications, and essential urban-industrial common services, must be either provided by the government, or provided by governmentally-regulated utilities. Otherwise, disaster ensues. On this point, President George Washington and other leading architects of the 1787 Federal Constitution were emphatically persuaded, and rightly so.

LaRouche once stated that his most prominent predecessors in the science of economics, were the universal genius Gottfried Leibniz, France’s organizer of economic and military strength Lazare Carnot, U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, and Friedrich List. List was a leading thinker among the 19th-century heirs of Alexander Hamilton.

Hamilton’s heirs definitely included the author of this “forgotten” book, Congressman E.G. Spaulding of Buffalo, New York.

CC/Dan Smith

The U.S. Federal Reserve building in Washington, D.C.

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Today, in the United States, the “monopoly . . . for issuance and regulation of its currency” that LaRouche spoke of, is not exerted by the Federal government (the Treasury Department) but by a very large bank associated with the government but run by other large private banks—the Federal Reserve Bank. It is the Federal government’s deposit bank, and receives the federal tax revenues as deposits, which form part of its liquid capital. It is authorized to print money at any time to create liquidity reserves for the major private banks.

It is now being proposed by the left wing of the Democratic Party, that national credit “for infrastructure” be made available as follows: The Federal Reserve will quickly print trillions in new dollars as Federal Reserve notes, which it will lend to state public banks or community banks formed for this purpose; those banks will fund what this wing of the Democrats call “the Green New Deal.”

We will consider whether this muscling of currency by the Federal Reserve Bank is a way to “make the national credit available,” or would be the disaster that LaRouche warned of “whenever the state fails to exert a monopoly of responsibility for issuance and regulation of its currency.”

Mathew Brady

Elbridge G. Spaulding

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Desperately Needed Ways and Means

First, let us consider the achievement of the author of this “forgotten” book.

Rep. Elbridge Gerry Spaulding was a Lincoln Republican from Buffalo, New York, a commercial banker, a Hamiltonian and follower of what was called then the American System of Economy, and Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee during the Civil War. In that capacity, Spaulding wrote the “legal tender” legislation passed in January 1862 that created the Greenback currency. It was the first paper currency in American history issued directly by the U.S. Treasury—not as the currency of a national bank.

Congressman Spaulding did not simply write the legislation because of his position; he devised it, and organized support for it through the House of Representatives. His book shows that Speaker Thaddeus Stevens aided in this, but with conditions. Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase was not always helpful in this experiment. And although President Lincoln pushed the Greenback legislation and immediately signed it, he also pursued other legislation with Secretary Chase, whose objectives had to do with making national credit available both for the war and for long-term infrastructure investments.

E.G. Spaulding can be given the credit for “the credit of the government made immediately available” to fight and win the Civil War for the Union. He and only a few other Republicans thought the war could be long and hard, and saw the need for credit potentially in the billions of dollars. That was the equivalent, in that day, of today’s manifest need in the trillions of dollars for investment in a new economic infrastructure. And in January 1862, the need for billions in credit was not “over a decade,” as such investment needs are glibly discussed now, but starting right away.

A Loan Without Interest by the People

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Spaulding published his book in 1869 as a complete history of the Congressional action to create the Greenbacks. He began:

The United States, at the breaking out of the Rebellion, had no national bank currency, and no gold or available means in the Treasury . . . to carry on the war for the Union; and consequently, the means to prosecute the war had to be obtained upon the credit of the government, and by taxation. The fundable legal tender currency was the most available form of credit which the government could use in crushing the rebellion. It was at once a loan to the government without interest, and a national currency. [Emphasis in original.]

He made clear as well that the Union government’s attempts to issue bonds in Europe had already failed. And, bonds issued to the big banks in New York City would both carry prohibitively high interest rates, and realize less than the face value of the debt.

Where was the national credit to be found? Or as Spaulding understood the question, where was the credit of the government with the people to be found? He answered at the start of 1862 with the issue of paper currency, “Greenbacks,” as legal tender, and successfully enough for the Union to be saved.

Today’s elected officials appear unable to answer that question—“Where is national investment to come from, to revive high-technology manufacturing and build new economic infrastructure?”—although today the United States Treasury easily borrows large amounts without a discount, and at low rates.

National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History

A $1 Legal Tender Note from the Series 1862-63 Greenback issue.

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Right in the title of his 1869 “blow-by-blow” account, Spaulding describes the Greenback currency as “being a loan without interest and a national currency.” Few people may think of the dollar paper currency they earn and spend, as value loaned by the people to the government; but that is what it is.

Leave aside the technical explanations of why this is the case. The fundamental reason is much clearer: The American people—through their labor, their skills and knowledge, their discoveries and inventions, the companies they capitalize and operate—create all of the real economic value which can be the basis of a national currency. The currency is issued against that national production of economic value; and the people, if they agree to accept and use it at its face value, prepare to lend some of that labor and productive value to the government, including by paying their taxes and buying government bonds with it.

If they accept the currency at face value, the government is able to repay this loan—no longer by returning gold or silver coin for paper dollars, but by providing new infrastructures and universities to raise their economic productivity, and military forces for their security, and so forth. If the people refuse to accept the currency, and it becomes devalued—leaving aside the reasons for this—the government is able to obtain much less economic value and provide much less. It is the government’s credit with the people and their institutions, which is measured when it issues a currency.

Results of Issuing the New Currency

Congressman Spaulding stated this as follows, when he noted that the Greenback currency had devalued only to about 71 cents against a dollar of gold at the end of the Civil War, although nearly $450 million had been printed and the Union government had borrowed a total of more than $2 billion, resorting even to very short-term promissory notes. These amounts were unheard of—unthought-of—until that time.

At the close of this year, July 1, 1865, and the close of hostilities, 1 dollar in gold was worth, in Greenbacks, $1.41. . . . All the bonds and Greenback promises now outstanding, do not represent tangible property and means owned by the government, but property in the possession of people under its jurisdiction. . . . In short, the debt must be paid from the earnings and income of the people, in some form of taxation to be enforced by the government. . . .

It was the people’s loan to the government, without interest, and was at the same time advantageous to them, because it was money in all business transactions.

More importantly, Spaulding next outlined the reason the people would easily make good the Federal government’s debt, represented by the issues of Greenbacks and the new “national bank currency” which began to be issued near the end of the Civil War under the bank reorganizations of President Lincoln. The results of investing the new currency—progress of the real economy, and greater productivity of the people, despite the destruction of the war—would make the future repayment of that debt of the nation easy:

The resources of the country will increase with as great rapidity as its population. New and improved systems of communication are expanding in all directions; the Atlantic and Pacific slopes will very soon be bound together by iron bands “across the continent”; the mechanic arts, improved machinery, with agricultural, mineral and commercial facilities fully developed, will carry the nation so rapidly forward in power and resources, that nothing need prevent the Government, . . . and as early as the year 1900, from pay[ing] the last dollar of the debt incurred in crushing the greatest rebellion known in the world’s history, and without retarding the growth and prosperity of the great Republic.

The national debt, in fact, fell from 30% of estimated GDP in 1865 to less than 5% in 1900.

Did the printing of so much new currency, so rapidly, produce inflation? Spaulding detailed that it did, especially during 1864. But because the new currency was mobilizing such increases in productivity, inflation—which also increased wages—was not harmful:

It would seem [he wrote] that no other country could have borne up under such a sudden expansion of the credit circulation, and the changing of so many men from producers to destroyers of life and property. This great inflation of the paper medium had, however, some compensating advantages. It stimulated into wonderful activity all the productive energies of common labor, skilled labor, and machinery of all kinds.

Were new taxes necessary to make the credit of the nation available? They were. Spaulding wrote:

The Act of July 1, 1862, called the INTERNAL REVENUE LAW, provid[ed] for a levy of duties on various domestic manufactures, upon trades and occupations, and also a system of stamp, license, income, and other duties. And the Act of July 14th, of the same year, largely increased the duties on imports. These laws were from time to time amended and enlarged, until large sums were realized from this mode of taxation, and formed a very substantial basis on which to rest the credit of the government for the large issue of notes, bonds, and other obligations.

But, because of the great increases in productivity, industrial technology and infrastructure—and despite destruction of lives and wealth by the war—these tax rates fell over the next generation and the national debt was dramatically reduced, as America became the world’s leading industrial power.

The same process occurred during the 1930s New Deal and the mobilization of World War II. Internal Revenue Service data shows that household and corporate tax rates rose dramatically as the national credit was made available through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, TVA, Public Works Administration, war mobilization authorities, etc. Technological productivity in the economy rose at the fastest rate in our history during those decades. Then tax rates fell, slightly in the 1950s and much more in the 1960s and 1970s.

The productive effect of the national credit—a debt of the government—made the repayment of it easy to the next generations.

NUCLEAR ENERGY

Recognition of Small Modular Reactors’ Role in the Coming World Is Increasing, But Is that Enough?

by Ramtanu Maitra

OSU

NuScale Power, a spinoff of Oregon State University, created a small modular nuclear reactor that does not need outside power to shut down during an emergency.

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April 7—Since EIR’s article last November[fn_1] on the developmental prospects of small modular reactors (SMRs), particularly in the United States, at least three major SMR developments have occurred around the globe—in the U.S., China and Canada.

The November 2018 article highlighted NuScale Power based in Tigard, Oregon and its selection of BWX Technologies (BWXT) in Lynchburg, Virginia to refine NuScale’s design for manufacturability, assembly and transportability of these modular reactors. This article is an update on the international recognition of SMRs.

Despite the developments reported here, it is evident that SMR development is lacking crucial input from governments—Russia, United States, China, Japan, and India, among others—to work out a functional model, or a couple of models, of SMRs with an eye to expediting SMR deployment in the developing nations.

Developing SMRs quickly and in large numbers is a winning plan to provide a huge population of this world—who have spent their lives with little or no power—an opportunity to access a stable and steady power source and utilize it to develop infrastructure as they need it. This is the prime necessity for SMRs. While SMRs have a significant role to play in the developed nations, where they are in the process of being developed, the goal of the developers should be to get SMRs into the developing nations.

In other words, the success of SMRs depends entirely on their ability to be deployed in large numbers in the developing world. A few, not that many, can be deployed in the developed nations, but SMR technologies will have to contend constantly with the large nuclear reactors which, megawatt-for-megawatt, will remain cheaper than the SMRs. And, of course, in the developed nations, where homes are lit throughout the year and are heated in cold winters, cost will be the supreme determining factor. In those circumstances, the SMRs will lose the contest, and remain a peripheral source of power generation. However, in the developing nations, where the contest will highlight the advantages suitable for them, SMRs will win every time.

New Developments

In the United States, a bill, S.3422, titled the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act (NELA),[fn_2] has been introduced in the Senate “to direct the Secretary of Energy to establish advanced nuclear goals; provide for a versatile, reactor-based fast neutron source; make available high-assay, low-enriched uranium for research, development, and demonstration of advanced nuclear reactor concepts; and for other purposes.” In addition to urging the Trump Administration to propel the United States once more into the leadership position in nuclear power development, the bill, among other things, states that “making limited quantities of high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) available from Department of Energy stockpiles of uranium would allow for initial fuel testing and demonstration of advanced nuclear reactor concepts,” accelerating advanced nuclear reactors including the SMRs. [box: What Is a Small Modular Reactor?]

To fuel today’s commercial nuclear reactors, the uranium must be enriched so that the Uranium-235 concentration, or “assay,” is raised to between 4 and 5 percent. This is called low-enriched uranium (LEU). Many of the reactor designs being prepared for future deployment will need a higher assay uranium fuel to operate. High-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) has a U-235 assay above 5 percent but below 20 percent.

The Senate bill also urges the government to extend the term of federal power purchase agreements (PPA) to 40 years from the current 10-year limit. The PPA provisions of the bill would not apply to existing or under-construction nuclear reactors because they are not advanced reactors, but those provisions could apply to a small modular reactor that is under development. In April, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission completed the first phase of design certification—the first step in any nuclear project—for NuScale’s small modular reactor, which uses first-of-kind safety measures such as, for example, not requiring emergency backup generators.

Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) would be NuScale’s first customer. In 2016, UAMPS identified a preferred site at the Idaho National Laboratory for a 12-reactor project that NuScale is working on with the public power utility. If S.3422 does become law, it could be “immediately impactful for NuScale,” which is looking to deploy its first series of small reactors in 2026, according to the company’s chief strategy officer, Chris Colbert.[fn_3]

China and Canada

In China, where nuclear power development is considered an absolute necessity to replace polluting power sources while providing a steady source of high energy flux-density to meet the demand of China’s growing industrial and commercial sectors, Global Construction Review reported on March 29 that the 125 MW ACP100, designed by China National Nuclear Corporation, will be collocated with the existing Changjiang nuclear plant on Hainan Island on the South China Sea. The construction of the SMR is expected to take a little less than five-and-a-half years, with the first electricity expected to be produced by May 31, 2025.

CNNC

Concept illustration showing the many application and installation possibilities for the ACP100 multi-purpose modular nuclear reactor.

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The ACP100, scheduled to be built underground, based on existing pressurized water reactor (PWR) technology adapting verified passive safety systems, is a third-generation PWR design, intended to supply power to smaller grids and remote areas, as well as offering heat to urban areas—an important application in northern China—and to desalination plants. The almost exclusive use of coal in the colder climes of northern China, is causing serious pollution, particularly by dust, particulates, sulfur, and nitrogen oxides. Not available in the public domain is how and where these ACP100s will be clustered. The NuScale-designed SMRs will be of 50 MW capacity and twelve such modules can be clustered around a single central control station.

In Canada, the nuclear regulator has received the country’s first license application to build a small modular nuclear power reactor. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) says the application, from Global First Power (GFP), with support from Ontario Power Generation and Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation, is to deploy its Micro Modular Reactor (MMR) plant at Chalk River in Ontario. According to World Nuclear Association information, the reactor uses fuel in prismatic graphite blocks and has a sealed transportable core. The reactor completed the first phase of the CNSC’s pre-licensing vendor design review process in January.

The proposed GFP project’s nuclear plant, containing an MMR unit, will provide approximately 15 MW (thermal) of process heat to an adjacent plant, where it can be converted to electrical power (up to 5 MW of electricity) or used as heat for clients. The electrical power could also be supplied to the area grid.[fn_4]

In addition to the developments reported here in the United States, Canada, and China, a number of other countries are also moving ahead with SMRs. Some of them, such as Argentina and the UK are well advanced in this venture. Argentina’s CAREM (Central Argentina de Elementos Modulares) project has reached a new milestone in the development of the twelve steam generators for the prototype CAREM-25. World Nuclear News reported on this development in May 2018.

Argentina and Britain

CAREM is Argentina’s first domestically designed and developed 25 megawatt electric (MWe) nuclear power unit. The prototype of this small pressurized water reactor is being built at a site adjacent to the Atucha nuclear power plant in Lima, 110 kilometers northwest of Buenos Aires. Concrete was first poured for the reactor in February 2014, marking the official start of its construction. At least 70% of the components and related services for CAREM-25 are to be sourced from Argentine companies. The prototype will be capable of supplying electricity, for example, to a city of 120,000 inhabitants. More powerful units of this design will have a capacity of about 120 MWe. The CAREM project aims to enable Argentina to compete in the global market for small modular reactors, World Nuclear News noted.[fn_5]

CAREM-CNEA

Cutaway of Argentina’s CAREM-25 prototype pressurized water modular nuclear reactor.

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In Britain, where the power generation future has begun to look bleaker by the day, three proposed, large nuclear reactor projects have faltered recently, representing more than 40% of the country’s planned new nuclear capacity. In January, Japan’s Hitachi suspended work at the $20.5 billion Wylfa plant in Wales, along with work on its nuclear project at Oldbury-on-Severn in Gloucestershire. This followed the abandonment of the Moorside project in Cumbria late last year, by Toshiba. However, unlike many, if not most, of the European Union countries, UK is not keen to abandon nuclear power and does not want to hang its future entirely on wind, solar, and tidal wave energy sources.

Rolls-Royce leads a consortium that is developing SMRs, but the group said last summer that it needed government support to continue its project. POWER magazine reported in January that it was seeking more than £200 million (about $263 million) in government funding. The group already makes components for nuclear submarines that use PWR technology.

The company has said it is developing a 220 MW SMR, a unit that could be doubled for a larger-scale project. In 2016, Paul Stein, the company’s Chief Scientific Officer, pegged the cost of a 440 MW plant at about $2.3 billion, saying, “One of the advantages of the SMRs is that they cost a lot less [than large nuclear plants], and it is an easier case to present to private investors.”[fn_6]

The Need for Joint Efforts

A prime objective in developing SMRs is to proliferate electric power production in the developing nations that are crying out for it. In the entire continent of Africa, populated by 1.2 billion people, nuclear power has no presence, other than the two nuclear reactors at Koeberg in South Africa, as I pointed out in the cited November 16, 2018 EIR article. And yet Africa is desperate for more electrical power to provide a future for today’s and tomorrow’s population.

Similarly, in Southeast Asia, although in the vicinity of four nuclear power manufacturers—China, Japan, South Korea and India—none of the ten members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)—Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam—has a single nuclear power plant. While nuclear has not played any role whatsoever in these countries, most of them desperately need a much larger electricity generating capacity for their growth. They are damming every stream in sight to generate hydroelectric power.

SMRs will also help developed nations by providing power in remote areas with low population density but great mining potential and security needs. SMRs will be a boon for any coastal country facing a fresh water shortfall. China is seriously considering using these plants to provide power for desalination of seawater for domestic and commercial use.

To bring SMRs into the world economy quickly, the developers should seek joint efforts to make one particular model the standard SMR workhorse and install that model as quickly as possible, to provide power-starved nations with a future. There is no doubt that over time, more advanced reactors—such as gas-cooled, fast-neutron, and even pebble-bed varieties of SMRs—will replace the small PWRs now being worked on in the U.S., China and Britain, among other nations.

Canada, on the other hand, is probably spreading its capability too thin. A June 2016 report for the Ontario Ministry of Energy focused on nine designs under 25 MWe for off-grid remote sites. All had a medium level of technology readiness and were expected to be competitive against diesel. Two designs were integral PWRs of 6.4 and 9 MWe, three were High Temperature Reactors (HTRs) of 5, 8 and 16 MWe, two were sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs) of 1.5/2.8 and 10 MWe, one was a lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) of 3-10 MWe, and one was a Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) of 32.5 MWe. Four were under 5 MWe (an SFR, LFR, and two HTRs).

Cutaway of NuScale Power’s small modular nuclear reactor. Text of graphic (left column, top to bottom):

NUSCALE POWER MODULE (trademark)

NATURAL CIRCULATION OF REACTOR COOLANT FLOW

CONDUCTION: Heat is transferred fromthe primary coolant through the walls of the tubes in the steam generator, heating the water (secondary coolant) inside them to turn it to steam.

CONVECTION: Energy from nuclear reaction heats the primary reactor coolant causing it to rise by convection and natural buoyancy through the riser, much like a chimney effect.

GRAVITY: Colder (denser) primary coolant "falls" to bottom of reactor pressure vessel, cycle continues.

(right column, top to bottom):

STEAM LINE

FEEDWATER LINE

CONTAINMENT VESSEL

REACTOR VESSEL

SUPPORT TRUNNION

STEAM GENERATOR

RISER

NUCLEAR CORE

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NuScale’s Collaborations

There are already some efforts to develop a “standard” SMR. NuScale is involved with the Canadian and British developers and is making some efforts that could help develop similar models of its own. According to the NuScale website, “NuScale Power has been actively involved in the UK Government’s Small Modular Reactors Feasibility Study. Following a technical assessment by the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory, it was concluded that the NuScale Power Module is a credible technology, feasible for deployment within a ten year timeframe and, alongside other options, should be investigated further for potential UK involvement.”

Fluor Corporation, NuScale’s primary investor, employs more than 1,200 staff in the UK. NuScale has entered into collaborative agreements with other key parts of the UK nuclear sector, including the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre at the University of Sheffield.

In Canada as well, NuScale has made its presence known. On November 27, 2018, NuScale Power announced it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Canada’s Bruce Power to deploy NuScale’s Integral Pressurized Water Reactor (IPWR) small modular reactor technology in Canada. Bruce Power will support evaluation, planning and licensing activities for the NuScale design, including feasibility studies for proposed SMR sites, NuScale said. Bruce Power is Canada’s largest private nuclear power generator, operating eight CANDU (Canada Deuterium Uranium) pressurized heavy-water reactors for 6.4 GW of capacity at its Tiverton site, northwest of Toronto.[fn_7]

[fn_1]. ”Four-Power Priority: Mass Production of Modular Nuclear Reactors to Industrialize Developing Countries: Until Fusion Power Comes Online,” by Ramtanu Maitra. EIR, Vol. 45, No. 46, Nov.16, 2018. Pp. 11-17. https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2018/eirv45n46-20181116/11-17_4546.pdf [back to text for fn_1]

[fn_2]. S.3422, titled, Nuclear Energy Leadership Act (NELA) https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/3422/text?format=txt [back to text for fn_2]

[fn_3]. “Bipartisan Legislation Aims to Boost Nuclear Power Research,” by Peter Maloney. American Public Power Association, Sept. 13, 2018. https://www.publicpower.org/periodical/article/bipartisan-legislation-aims-boost-nuclear-power-research [back to text for fn_3]

[fn_4]. “Canada’s Regulator Receives First License Application for Small Modular Reactor.” NucNet, April 3, 2019. https://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2019/04/03/canada-s-regulator-receives-first-licence-application-for-small-modular-reactor [back to text for fn_4]

[fn_5]. “Argentina Reaches Generator Milestone for CAREM-25.” World Nuclear News, May 8, 2018. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Argentina-reaches-generator-milestone-for-CAREM-25-08051801.html [back to text for fn_5]

[fn_6]. “Consortium Asks UK to Support SMR Nuclear Development,” by Darrell Proctor. POWER magazine, Jan. 28, 2019. https://www.powermag.com/consortium-asks-uk-to-support-smr-nuclear-development/ [back to text for fn_6]

[fn_7] . “NuScale, Bruce Power to develop SMR Business Case.” Nuclear Energy Insider, Nov. 28, 2018. https://analysis.nuclearenergyinsider.com/france-close-14-reactors-2035-bruce-power-build-nuscale-smr-business-case [back to text for fn_7]

What Is a Small Modular Reactor?

As nuclear power generation has become established since the 1950s, the size of reactor units has grown from 60 megawatts electric (MWe) to more than 1600 MWe, with corresponding economies of scale in operation. At the same time, there have been many hundreds of smaller power reactors built for naval use (up to 190 MW thermal) and as neutron sources, yielding enormous expertise in the engineering of small power units. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) defines “small” as under 300 MWe, and up to about 700 MWe as “medium”—including many operational units from the 20th century. Together they are now referred to by the IAEA as small and medium reactors (SMRs). However, “SMR” is used more commonly as an acronym for “small modular reactor,” designed for serial construction. Several of them, when installed in a cluster, can form a single, large nuclear power plant.

Today, due partly to the high capital cost of large power reactors generating electricity via the steam cycle and partly to the need to service small electricity grids under about 4 GWe, there is a move to develop smaller units. These may be built independently or as modules in a larger complex, with capacity added incrementally as required.

Small modular reactors (SMRs) are defined as nuclear reactors generally having a capacity to produce 300 MWe equivalent or less, designed with modular technology using module factory fabrication, pursuing economies of series production and short construction times. This definition, from the World Nuclear Association, is closely based on those of the IAEA and the U.S. Nuclear Energy Institute. [back to text]

III. Expose the British Subversion

ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST

New Paradigm Requires Full Exposure

of Russiagate’s ‘British Character’

This is the edited transcript of the Schiller Institute’s New Paradigm Webcast of April 4, 2019. A video of this webcast is available.

Harley Schlanger: Hello, I’m Harley Schlanger from the Schiller Institute. Welcome to our webcast with our founder and Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche. It’s April 4th, 2019, and as always, there’s a lot taking place not known to most of you, unless you’re frequently on our website, because the media continue with their policy of blacking out the important developments while presenting the public with fake news.

We should start with the quite amazing scene of Congress whooping and hollering, to welcome the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, who’s come to the United States for NATO’s anniversary, and he’s pushing war. Helga, what’s the point of this trip? What’s he doing?

NATO

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg applauded by Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after his anti-Russia address to a special joint session of Congress on April 3, 2019.

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Helga Zepp-LaRouche: It’s the 70th anniversary of NATO, but NATO really became a superfluous organization after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It could have integrated Russia, to have a useful purpose, as was discussed in 1991. Stoltenberg is in the United States speaking as a hawk of the war party.

He met with President Trump April 2, at the White House, and pushed the line that NATO must be ready to defend against that “authoritarian regime, Russia,” and on and on. President Trump had quite a different tone, saying that he wants to have a good relationship with Russia, and with China, and hopefully with everybody else. And despite the fact that some reporters were trying to push him to say something different, Trump stuck to this line.

Then, the next day, as you already said, Stoltenberg addressed a joint session of Congress, a privilege normally granted only to heads of government and heads of state. This rotten Congress celebrated him like a war hero, giving him several standing ovations. You have to ask yourself: “Is such a display consistent with the actual behavior of Russia and China?” Clearly not.

So your next question should be: “What is this war party really up to—given the existence of a whole chorus of such people?” The U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, also talked about the aggressive behavior of Russia. But it was NATO that announced it will be increasing its presence in the Black Sea. In the context of the upcoming, final election in Ukraine, we really must be attentive to further provocations. Then you had several of the leading members of the Atlantic Council testifying both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, all pushing this line—aggressive behavior. The first day of the NATO summit is also devoted to pushing this line of Russia being the big threat.

This is really worrisome. Meeting in Washington, the NATO foreign ministers all agreed to increase their defense budgets to 2% of their respective countries’ federal budgets, which is way beyond what Germany has been willing to do. And what is this supposed to lead up to? We’re already in the middle of an arms race, the cancellation of the INF Treaty, large troop exercises, etc. This doesn’t look peaceful at all.

USN/Ford Williams

The U.S. guided missile destroyer USS Donald Cook (foreground) in a simulated replenishment-at-sea with Turkey’s frigate TS Fatih in the Black Sea, Feb. 22, 2019.

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Schlanger: There’s also discussion of challenging Russia in the Black Sea; in the Baltic Sea, encounters are occurring almost every day. In the midst of this, though, there was an act of sanity in the Congress yesterday from Republican Sen. Rand Paul and Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna, who jointly put forward a bill in support of President Trump’s decision to move troops out of Syria. Do you think it’s possible to move the Congress on this? It’s clear that the war party has the upper hand there, even after the Mueller report showed that there was no collusion with Russia, no obstruction of justice. Where do you think the Congress is headed on this?

Left: CC/TED; right: Gage Skidmore

Left: Rep. Ro Khanna; right: Sen. Rand Paul

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Zepp-LaRouche: The good thing is that President Trump is basically setting a different tone. Some of these Democrats are still trying—despite the “nothingburger” of the Mueller report—to push anything against Trump. In the United States, there is a daily barrage of anything and everything against President Trump. One can only hope—given that the 2020 election campaign has already begun—that the voters will look at that and give them all the bill for their behavior and vote them out of the house.

Schlanger: The polls show that there’s still very little concern about Russia; that the concern is about jobs, about debt, about student debt, and so on.

Release the Russiagate Documents!

Just to go back to one other thing on Russiagate: James Comey was out talking about his fear of an investigation of the investigators, saying this can’t be allowed to happen. But this is something President Trump has said must happen. How important is it, Helga, that there be a day of reckoning for the people who ran Russiagate?

Zepp-LaRouche: I think such an investigation must happen, because the British character of the coup must be exposed—two years and an enormous amount of taxpayers’ money was wasted as Trump correctly said. And more importantly, that this should never, ever happen again to an American President. But unless it is stopped, it will happen again, because this is the method of control. Given that that Congressman Devin Nunes has turned over a whole bunch of documents to Attorney General William Barr to investigate these things, that Trump alluded to the fact that his lawyers are doing a good job, saying that all of these documents must be released and made public, I think public pressure is required to keep things on a straight course.

Two Tendencies in the U.S.

Schlanger: At the same time that we’re seeing the anti-Russia side of things, there is an increasing drumbeat against China, precisely at the point that there are significant shifts occurring in Europe. China has made progress, with the MOUs being signed in Italy and Luxembourg. The second Belt and Road Forum is coming up later this month in Beijing: Do you think the timing of the attacks on China is a coincidence—that all of a sudden we see escalating attacks on China?

Zepp-LaRouche: It is really is very ominous. President Trump is hoping to get an agreement in the U.S.-China trade talks, which look promising from what we see in some statements, including those in the Chinese media and from some Chinese politicians. But there are also news articles that point to the complete inconsistency between those people who hope that the U.S.-China trade talks will come to a positive conclusion, and those who declare China to be an adversary or rival.

DoS/Ron Przysucha

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said repeatedly that the projects of the Belt and Road Initiative constitute a national security threat to the United States because, as he put it, they have national security implications both for the United States and for “our friends and allies.”

Now, this is completely ludicrous. China’s clear intention, its stated policy, and actual record, has been to build ports, roads, and railways in those countries that urgently require infrastructure. China has repeatedly emphasized that it does not plan to overthrow the present order, it is not trying to create spheres of influence, but on the contrary, has invited all nations, including the United States, to cooperate with China in these endeavors.

Look at the sharp contrast between President Trump—who continues to talk about President Xi as his good friend and says that China is a great country, which I think is the healthy and sane view—and the attitude clearly expressed by all the intelligence services, and also from Trump cabinet members including Secretary of State Pompeo, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Vice President Mike Pence, all pushing the line that the Belt and Road Initiative is a big threat.

Now, this has to be resolved; otherwise you cannot go in the direction of solving the world’s problems, especially with the proposal of my husband, Lyndon LaRouche, for a Four Power agreement. You cannot have an adversarial relationship with Russia and China, and at the same time hope you can solve the world’s problems, including the danger of a coming crash, which we should talk about in a little while. This has to be resolved.

And it’s very unfortunate that the United States, this time, is not planning on sending a high-level representative to the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. Two years ago, the United States sent Matthew Pottinger, who was relatively high level—not high enough. We had campaigned for President Trump to go himself.

This year, more than forty heads of state and government are expected. I think it is really a mistake for the United States not to participate because, as I said, you cannot at the same time have it both ways—have China as an enemy-image, and have good trade relations.

NASA/Bill Ingalls

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine (left) and Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin in Baikonur, Kazakhstan on Oct. 10, 2018.

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Cooperation in Space

Schlanger: In one area —space—it appears as though there’s good cooperation between the United States and Russia. Dmitry Rogozin, Director General of Roscosmos, praised the cooperation with the United States. At the same time, Trump seems to be taking a Kennedyesque approach to a Moon-Mars mission. How important is this as a flank against the anti-Russia, anti-China line coming from the neoconservative geopoliticians?

Zepp-LaRouche: As we have stressed many times, if you want to solve the problems of the present, you have to define the future of mankind, and then apply that view from the future as the way to solve the problems in our present time. Obviously, joint space research, space travel, space cooperation in a Moon-Mars program, as President Trump has actually put it back on the agenda is very, very good. He wants to have Americans back on the Moon in five years; he wants to have a Moon-Mars commission to work out the next steps for the Mars mission. He also mentioned the need for international cooperation in that, and as Rogozin, just emphasized, the relationship between Roscosmos and NASA are fortunately very good.

NASA/Seth Marcantel

Expedition 44/45 crew members Kjell Lindgren of NASA (left), Oleg Kononenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos (center), and Kimya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (right) in training for a 5-month mission on the International Space Station on May 27, 2019.

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Starting this week, three American astronauts will undergo training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia for three months before being sent to the International Space Station, so this is all going in the right direction. And we have the very exciting news that China’s Yutu-2 rover has awakened again after the two-week lunar night, and is working again on the far side of the Moon, taking measurements of rocks and performing other experiments.

CNSA

Tire tracks of China’s Yutu-2 rover on the far side of the Moon, March 30, 2019.

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So, I think that if the United States, Russia, India, China and other spacefaring nations and organizations such as the European Space Agency would all cooperate, all the problems really can be solved. Rogozin made the point quite clearly in his interview, saying that people “who professionally engage in space activities are perfectly aware that they need each other.” And since our whole planet and the whole human race is in space, so to speak, I think that that outlook is what should be applied to all the other problems we have on our planet.

Two Tendencies in Europe

Schlanger: We can see the Four Powers coming together in space, so why not on Earth?

That brings us to what’s sometimes a painful topic, the situation in Europe. We’ve seen the very positive effects recently coming from President Xi Jinping’s trip to Italy and Luxembourg—the Memos of Understanding signed by those countries formalizing their participation in the Belt and Road. We also have reports from two German cities, Duisburg and Bremen, showing a very clear desire for collaboration with China. But we also have crazy statements, like that of the French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire about Europe being the “new empire.” Please give us your sense of how this fight is shaping up in Europe.

Zepp-LaRouche: I think we have in Europe the same two tendencies that we’ve just discussed in the United States, that is, President Trump trying to reach out to Russia and China, and the war party trying to block him. That same conflict exists in Europe.

You mentioned the French Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, who just authored a book, The New Empire: Europe in the 21st Century. I find it quite incredible that people have the guts and the nerve to praise Europe as an empire. In the book, he says that we need Europe not to be “an empire of domination,” but “a peaceful empire,” to counter the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, and to counter Trump’s “America First” policy.

I think this kind of view, given that the Belt and Road Initiative is clearly not about geopolitical confrontation, but is open to every nation and organization that wishes to cooperate, this view by Le Maire is the old geopolitical view, which in essence led to two world wars. And it will lead nowhere today, other than war, because the British Empire is not doing so well these days. Everybody is laughing about the shenanigans of Prime Minister Theresa May. No one knows how Brexit will turn out. And no one dares to say if her negotiations with Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn will produce anything. It’s possible, but doubtful. So that remains a mess.

CC/Aron Urb

Bruno Le Maire, French Minister of Economy and Finance.

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I think the view that we need confrontation with other so-called big powers like China and the United States, is just a rotten view. And therefore, it is much, much better that you have the developments of Italy joining the Belt and Road Initiative; Luxembourg, which is really amazing, given that Jean-Claude Juncker was the Prime Minister of Luxembourg—but now Luxembourg has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China.

Even in Germany, there are many signs of the desire by German industry to not be left out. You mentioned the Bremen conference that I attended: This was the founding of the Federal Association of the German Silk Road Initiative (BVDSI), and despite the fact that there were two very nasty, lying attacks by the tabloid Bildzeitung, the attendance was excellent. There were 150 people, with not one seat empty, and the spirit was very realistic and sober.

The speakers included the author, Dr. Karl Pilny, who correctly pointed to the fact that the historic period has shifted, and is still shifting to Asia. He said that the next century will be the Asian century—we in the Schiller Institute will make sure that it’s not only an Asian century, but it’s true that the economic momentum has shifted to Asia. Professor Pilny said that the pendulum of history has swung back to Asia and pointed to the fact that people who study the history of China, in particular, but also other great Asian nations, will realize that China, but also India and other Asian nations, were in the forefront of the history of the planet for millennia, having contributed incredibly in science, in art, in culture.

Another speaker, an economist, pointed to the fact that the momentum is already there, and either Germany cooperates, or Germany will be left completely behind.

Once there is the opportunity to express themselves, German industrialists will grab this opportunity. If you look at this month’s orders for capital goods and consumer goods, both have dropped significantly—capital goods orders are down 6%—this is not a small drop—and consumer goods orders are down something like 3.5%.

A Brighter Future?

The economic outlook must change. Look at Duisburg, which is located at the confluence of the Rhine and Ruhr, and is one Europe’s largest inland ports. In collaboration with the Belt and Road Initiative, Duisburg has expanded—there are now 47,000 jobs in the port directly or indirectly related to the trade with China; 35 trains arrive there every week from Chongqing. The whole region has started moving forward. There are some bottlenecks in the infrastructure going out of Duisburg—the famous Rhine Valley is completely overflooded with trains. These bottlenecks can be solved with modernization; a tunnel could be built to relieve some of the traffic congestion. I think that the potential for overcoming all these economic difficulties through the cooperation with the Belt and Road Initiative are enormous, contrary to the propaganda that is coming from these geopolitical mouthpieces.

Schlanger: We just heard that there will soon be a visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Italy, to build on what happened during Xi’s visit, so I think this is also in sharp contrast to the collapse that’s going on, and the division in Europe.

Zepp-LaRouche: It’s being prepared right now. Italy’s ambassador to Russia, Pasquale Terracciano, said that they’re preparing a spectacular trip for President Putin.

I think the need to put a different agenda on the table, one of cooperation, is urgent. After Xi’s visit to Italy, Italy’s Finance Minister, Giovanni Tria, participated in the Boao Forum for Asia, March 26-29 in Beijing—the Chinese equivalent of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. There he put out a warning, saying that he sees very clearly signs of a pending new crash, much bigger than 2008, and he warned that a global reduction in the economy in general, could become the trigger point for such a general collapse.

And we have just heard the new figures that the Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs), leveraged loans of firms that have indebted themselves—the equivalent of what the Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) were in the 2008 crisis—could, in an economic downturn, become the trigger point for a chain-reaction collapse. Dealing with that looming crisis is quite urgent.

We really need to discuss urgent measures. What my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, proposed, is still the only way to go: We need Glass-Steagall, to protect the commercial banks; we need to separate out the casino part of the economy; we need a national bank in every country; we need a credit system; we need to cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative in the development of Africa and the reconstruction of the Middle East; and in doing so, all the European countries and the United States, will find an approach for cooperation with Russia and China. Then we can solve all the problems, really. Such international cooperation is the only way to go. All other roads lead only to Hell on Earth.

Importance of Lyndon LaRouche’s Ideas

Schlanger: I think it’s crucial to put together what you said earlier about Le Maire’s book, The New Empire, with an op-ed written by the British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in the Washington Post, titled “Britain Has Been Shaping the World for Centuries. That Won’t Change with Brexit.”

One of the great areas of importance in Lyndon LaRouche’s work was his differentiation between the two systems: An imperial system, based on slave labor, based on destroying nations, no sovereignty, destroying science and culture and so on; and the creative power of a republic that depends on developing its citizens. When people think about why we’re mobilizing for Lyndon LaRouche’s exoneration, the issues that he raised in his 40 years in public life, these are the very issues that are shaping every single event on the planet today. Do you have any further comment on that, Helga?

Zepp-LaRouche: I think the issues that were raised by my husband, for practically the past 50 years must be consulted. We will produce many documentaries; we will feature all of his activities and revive all the writings which went along with them; his work in Latin America, his work with José López Portillo; his work on Latin American integration; his work with Indira Gandhi on a 40-year development plan for India; all these Africa programs—all of these ideas that he worked on, are still the very ideas shaping and forming the next 50 years. He insisted that a new paradigm of thinking must govern. In particular, the scientific ideas of Vladimir Vernadsky must control and shape the relations among the Eurasian nations, for the world to get into a safe future.

So I can only appeal to you, again: Sign the petition for the exoneration of my husband. Read his works! Become one with us in in this fight, which we will relentlessly continue until justice has been established. The attack against President Trump and the prosecution of my husband and his associates are one and the same issue. I ask you to join in this fight and do the best thing you can do for the future of all of humanity, which is to create the environment in which President Trump will exonerate my husband, Lyndon LaRouche.

Schlanger: You can find the petition for the exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche on the Schiller Institute website, www.schillerinstitute.com.

Helga, thank you very much for joining us today, and we’ll see you again next week.

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes, till next week.

EDITORIAL

Trump on a Peace Offensive;

the British Fight Back

by Harley Schlanger

White House/Shealah Craighead

President Trump with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He at the White House on April 4, 2019.

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April 6—In the wake of Attorney General William Barr’s March 24 release of the summary of the Report issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, with the conclusion that there was no evidence of either “collusion” with Russia nor evidence of Obstruction of Justice, President Donald Trump has launched a series of unprecedented initiatives in what can only be described as a global Peace Initiative. These include:

• The breathtaking announcement by President Trump, on March 26, on his commitment to send U.S. astronauts back to the Moon by 2024.

• President Trump’s rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on March 28, when he declared, “After three years of lies and smears and slander, the Russia hoax is finally dead. The collusion delusion is over.” Trump went on to emphasize that he will take steps to ensure that America “has a great relationship with Russia and China,” and that he hopes he will soon meet with both President Putin and China’s President Xi.

• The remarkable Town Hall meeting, on April 1, hosted by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, where he described President Trump’s timetable and the thinking behind the commitment for establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon.

• The Joint White House press briefing, April 2, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, where Trump publicly disagreed with Stoltenberg’s characterization of Russia as a strategic threat, saying, “I hope that it’s not going to be a security threat. I hope we have a good relationship with Russia, and with, by the way, China and everybody else. . . . I think that we will get along with Russia. I do believe that.”

• Trump’s unscripted comments at a joint White House appearance with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He on April 4, where he said, “Between Russia, China and us, we’re all making hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons, including nuclear, which is ridiculous. I think it’s much better if we all got together and didn’t make these weapons . . . those three countries I think can come together and stop the spending and spend on things that are more productive toward long term peace.” Trump then turned to Liu He, and asked, “I don’t know if I’m speaking out of turn. We haven’t discussed this very much, but I feel that, you know, the military expenditure of you, and Russia, us—it’s a lot. A lot of money could be put in other things. Would you like to respond to that?” Liu He replied. “I think it is a very good idea.” Following the meeting, Trump then told reporters that U.S.-China relations were the “best they have ever been,” and was effusive about the scope of the “epic” trade deal being negotiated with China, which he hopes will be completed within the next four weeks.

• Trump’s repeated calls, over the last twelve days, for “investigating the investigators,” i.e., the urgent necessity for determining the origins and the players involved in what was an attempted coup d’état against his Presidency. Given Trump’s previous public identification of the involvement of British Intelligence in the coup attempt, this is very dangerous for the British Crown.

Taken as a whole, these are unprecedented actions and statements,—for any U.S. President or other world leader—and they represent a clear perspective that the fight we are now engaged in can be won.

A Wounded Empire Regroups

Were President Trump to succeed in these initiatives, it would produce an abrupt end to the world order crafted by the geopoliticians serving the interests of the British Empire. After a day or two of a stunned reaction and fumbling for a response to the Mueller fiasco, various British assets hysterically responded. The frenetic Democrats wailed and gnashed their teeth, and then using their control over Congressional committees, they announced, incredibly, that they will continue their effort to find “collusion” with the Russians, which Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff says he “knows” occurred—perhaps a Ouija Board told him. They intend also to conduct numerous fishing expeditions by other committees into Trump’s businesses, his family’s businesses, campaign expenditures, security clearances, etc.

The pathetic nature of these shenanigans may be seen in the attempt to create a hue-and-cry around the demand to “release the full Mueller report,” even though President Trump has publicly stated that the release of the full report “wouldn’t bother me at all.” Democrats have also announced that they will subpoena Mueller and members of his team to appear before committees. The discredited former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by Trump—an act used to bring in Mueller as special counsel to look into “obstruction of justice” charges—spoke out against “investigating the investigators,” calling it a “dangerous step.” Ignoring the damage done by his corrupt allies in the FBI leadership and at the Justice Department—many of whom face criminal prosecutions—Comey said this would be “a terrible cycle to start.”

Leading Democrats have also joined with pro-war Republicans in a full-throated chorus of attacks on Russia and China, to poison any effort at building a new relationship with them. Members of both parties continue to demand that Trump react more forcefully against Russian and Chinese “aggression,” with some still accusing Putin of blackmailing Trump, reviving the blueprint from the discredited Christopher Steele report. They are using an egregious false claim against Russia left standing by Mueller—that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, to charge Russian President Vladimir Putin with malicious intent toward the United States. At the same time, a gang of Bush-connected has-beens has re-established the Cold War anti-Russian organization, the Committee on the Present Danger, this time with a focus on China.

Left: Gage Skidmore; right: DoS

Left: John Bolton; right: Elliott Abrams

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This anti-Trump agenda is being aided by statements coming from Anglophile snakes within his own administration, especially from National Security Adviser John Bolton, who has been taking the point in attacking Russia and China. Bolton, backed by a newly-appointed deputy, Iran-Contra criminal Elliott Abrams, has drawn an Obama-type red-line in Venezuela, issuing warnings to the Russians to stay out of Venezuela, proclaiming that any effort by Russia to “establish or expand military operations in the Hemisphere” will be considered “provocative actions.” Bolton’s hawkish statement was echoed in a March 29 Wall Street Journal editorial, “Putin Pulls a Syria in Venezuela,” which accuses Putin of repeated military interventions—in Georgia, Crimea, eastern Ukraine and Syria—saying he is now meddling in “America’s backyard in Venezuela.” The Russians have warned the United States against running a regime-change coup in Venezuela, especially as Trump has called for an end to such practices by the United States

The push for a confrontation with Russia in Venezuela is coming not only from “conservative” circles. Fareed Zakaria of the impeachment-cheerleading, so-called liberal CNN, tweeted on March 31, “The real puzzle remains: Why has Trump been unwilling to confront Putin in any way on any issue? And will Venezuela be the moment when Trump finally ends his appeasement?”

Britain’s War Drive

On March 28, the same day that President Trump declared in Grand Rapids that he will act to ensure that America “has a great relationship with Russia and China,” British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt authored an op-ed in the Washington Post with the provocative headline, “Britain has been shaping the world for centuries. That won’t change with Brexit”! Hunt states that the British have done, “alongside the U.S. . . . more to shape the world we live in than any other country.” He cites Britain’s role as the “No. 1 financial center in our hemisphere, the second largest military budget in NATO,” and its use of “soft power,” i.e., psychological and cultural warfare, as the basis of their “genuinely global reach.”

CC/NHS Confederation

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

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On April 4, Hunt was in Washington, D.C., along with other foreign ministers, to attend celebrations commemorating the 70th anniversary of the founding of NATO. The hoopla surrounding this event was heavily trumpeted by the Washington Post and other media, amidst dire warnings of “threats” posed by Russia and China.

Britain’s self-appointed role as the leader of the new war drive was on full display in an article published on April 1 by Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), the most important of the Queen’s strategic launching pads. Written by Hans Kundani, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, the headline tells it all: “To Preserve NATO, Britain Must Help Reinvent It.” He writes that the formation of NATO “was a British initiative.” “Then, as now,” he asserts, “Russia was increasingly seen as a threat to Europe.” While paying lip service to Trump’s demand that Europe must make a greater contribution to its own security, he concludes by writing that “The UK is the only power that can take the lead” in reshaping NATO to repel the Russian challenge.

At the NATO celebrations, it was NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg who took the point in insisting on military confrontation with Russia and China. At the April 2 White House press briefing with Donald Trump, Stoltenberg repeatedly attempted, yet failed, to box Trump into making anti-Russia and anti-Chinese comments. The Norwegian Stoltenberg is also a vocal advocate for imposing the anti-science genocidal demands by the United Nations for combating “climate change,” including mandatory reductions in “carbon emissions.” Here, too, he and Donald Trump are on opposite sides of the fence.

Next came Stoltenberg’s incredible performance, on April 3, in an address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, a convocation usually reserved for heads of state and heads of government. In an extraordinarily warlike speech before an unbelievably responsive Congress, Stoltenberg accused Russia of a litany of crimes, including chemical attacks in the U.K. (the notorious Skripal affair), support for “[Bashar al-]Assad’s murderous regime in Syria . . . cyber-attacks on NATO allies and partners, targeting everything from Parliaments to power grids . . . sophisticated disinformation campaigns, and attempts to interfere in democracy itself.” Needless to say, he did not provide any evidence to back up these charges, nor did he comment on the evidence which shows that these events either did not occur, or were the product of false-flag operations by the British, not the Russians.

Many Congressmen, on both sides of the aisle, gobbled up this garbage. President Trump clearly has not. And in the wake of the release of the Mueller report, he is in the strongest position he has enjoyed for many months. What will completely destroy these British designs—what will create even much greater freedom for Trump to act on his agenda—is the full exposure of the British role in “Russiagate,” i.e., the evidence that the attempt to carry out a putsch against a sitting U.S. President was organized at the highest levels of British Intelligence and the British elites.

Such revelations will provide President Trump with an opportunity to move forward in his peace initiatives with both Russia and China, and to proceed in the direction of a Four Power agreement to establish a New Bretton Woods. This is the perspective discussed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her April 4 webcast, and is the pathway for peace and development defined by Lyndon LaRouche throughout the recent decades.

Prominent Persons Call

To Exonerate Lyndon LaRouche

Fouad Al-Ghaffari

Founder of an NGO

Yemen

Rev. Andrew Ashdown

Priest, Church of England

Has led frequent truth-finding missions to Syria. Author, The Stones Cry Out: Reflections from Israel and Palestine

UK – Winchester, Hampshire

Dr. William Binney

Former Signals Intelligence Director, U.S. National Security Agency. Member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

USA – Washington, D.C.

Abraham Bolden, Sr.

First African-American Secret Service agent in U.S. history, under President Kennedy. Author, The Echo from Dealey Plaza: The True Story of the First African American on the White House Secret Service Detail, and His Quest for Justice After the Assassination of JFK

USA – Illinois

Ellen Brown

Founder and President, Public Banking Institute. Author, Web of Debt, and other books

USA – California

Ambassador A.H. Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos of Greece

Former Secretary General, Black Sea Economic Cooperation

Greece

Hon. Edwin W. Edwards

Governor, Louisiana (1972-1980, 1984-1988, 1992-1996). Representative, U.S. Congress, Louisiana 7th C.D. (1965-1972)

USA – Louisiana

Mike Gravel

Former U.S. Senator from Alaska (1969-1981). Read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record

USA – California

Fred Huenefeld, Jr.

Member, Louisiana State Democratic Central Committee

USA – Monroe, Louisiana

Sen. Tony Iwobi

Vice Chairman, Foreign Affairs and Emigration Committee, Italian Senate

Italy

Joseph Janco

Director, The Eurasia Center

USA – Washington, D.C.

James George Jatras

Former Foreign Policy Advisor to U.S. Senate Republicans

USA – Virginia

Dr. Vladislav Krasnow

Founder and President, Russia & America Goodwill Association

Russia, USA

Dr. Kirk Meighoo

Former Senator, Parliament of Trinidad & Tobago. Host of podcast “Independent Thought and Freedom”. Advisory Board Member, The Integrationist (Caribbean)

Trinidad & Tobago

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar

Founder and Director, JUST International

Malaysia

Dr. Eduardo M.A. Peixoto

Retired Professor of Physical Chemistry, University of São Paulo. Former Brazil delegate to the World Health Organization

Former Superintendent, Technical Board, the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES)

Brazil – São Paulo

Justin Price

Representative, Rhode Island State Legislature (R.-Dist. 39)

USA – Rhode Island

Gian Marco Sanna

Violinist

Director, Camerata Geminiani

UK, Italy

The Jan. 27, 1989 Jailing of Lyndon LaRouche

Defined an Era, Which Now Must End

Sign the Petition to Exonerate LaRouche at lpac.co/exonerate