Executive Intelligence Review, Volume 46, Number 43, November 1, 2019

- Cover

- Masthead

- EDITORIAL The Challenge of War is Its Challenge to the Mind by Tony Papert

- PDF edition Table of Contents — Volume 46, Number 43, November 1, 2019

- I. The Strategic Shift

- PRESIDENT TRUMP TO THE NATION A Major Breakthrough for Syria and the Middle East

- Trump and Putin Put Syria On the Road to Peace by Carl Osgood

- New Wall Street Crisis: This Time, LaRouche’s Policies Must Be Adopted by Paul Gallagher

- II. Strategy in Depth

- Ukrainegate, or the Coup Against President Donald Trump—Phase Three by Barbara Boyd

- ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST The Tables Have Turned on the Coup Plotters and Global Central Bankers

- Russia’s Historic Initiative In Sochi, the First Russia-Africa Summit by Christine Bierre

- Russia Offers Africa ‘Atoms for Peace’

- THE NEW PARADIGM ADVANCES Kenyan Standard Gauge Rail Successful in Looking Beyond the Here and Now by Mark Bender

- III. Where Are the Leaders?

- THE TRUE STATESMAN The Historical Individual by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. (2002)

- AMERICA AWAKENS IN A TIME OF CRISIS William Livingston, Alexander McDougall and the Committees of Correspondence by Robert Ingraham

Winning the Peace

Founder: Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. (1922–2019)

Editor-in-Chief: Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Co-Editors: Marcia Merry Baker, Paul Gallagher, Robert Ingraham, Tony Papert

Managing Editor: Stephanie Ezrol

Editorial Staff: David Cherry, Charles Notley

Technology: Marsha Freeman

Transcriptions: Katherine Notley

Ebooks: Richard Burden

Graphics: Alan Yue

Photos: Stuart Lewis

Circulation Manager: Stanley Ezrol

INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORS

Asia: Michael Billington

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.: Richard Black, Leni Rubinstein

Washington, D.C.: William Jones

Wiesbaden: Göran Haglund

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EDITORIAL

The Challenge of War is

Its Challenge to the Mind

by Tony Papert

Oct. 24—On Oct. 17, after his great victory for peace in Syria, President Trump tweeted, “This is a great day for civilization. I am proud of the United States for sticking by me in following a necessary, but somewhat unconventional, path.”

That was true in itself, yet at the same time, it points towards a more general truth. Over the past three years, the patriotic American people who elected Donald Trump, have fought painfully forward against the repeated efforts of British imperial forces, along with British-linked virtual traitors in America, to illegally and unconstitutionally remove President Trump from office. Those adversaries have still not yet given up their vile attempt to reverse the 2016 election (just as Establishment forces in Britain have been determined to reverse the results of the 2016 Brexit referendum there). Through peaks and troughs, the battle has raged. So far, each of their successive attempts has eventually been beaten back.

Phase One of the coup culminated in an effort to corrupt the Electoral College to overthrow the election. It was defeated. Phase Two culminated in the Mueller investigation—which was also defeated. Now, in Phase Three, we face the impeachment caper. Every day, a new “smoking gun” is discovered to supposedly guarantee the impeachment of the President.

Like the President’s victory in Syria, the defeat of Phase Two of the coup required a somewhat unconventional path—the “Mueller Dossier” campaign of the Lyndon LaRouche political movement. This gave the defense of the President and of the Constitution the “cutting edge” that was instrumental in its victory, regardless of the relatively small number of citizens directly involved in it. In Autumn of 2017, that movement put a dossier into mass-circulation that forced its readers to face the fact that it was a foreign power—not Moscow, but the British Empire—that had intervened in the U.S. elections, and after failing to defeat Trump in those elections, had used captive elements of the U.S. government conjointly with foreign intelligence services to try to force him out of office illegally.

The way these shocking facts were proven was also unconventional—by showing, chapter and verse, that the identical British and British-steered institutions, and even identical individuals, like Robert Mueller, were used to frame Lyndon LaRouche in 1988-89, and Donald Trump today!

That unconventional mass intervention gave a huge factitious advantage to everyone who stepped in to defend the President and the Constitution. Namely, if the coup-plotters were to try to refute the “Mueller Dossier” charges, they would find themselves inadvertently publicizing those very charges and thus bringing the late Lyndon LaRouche’s personal identity and ideas back into the limelight where Americans could use them. If they kept silent, the charges against them would be widely accepted—as they have been! What changes we have seen!

Now Phase Two has petered out after Bob Mueller’s pathetic Congressional testimony—but after a few weeks, Phase Three suddenly popped up, and with renewed virulence—the drive for impeachment. At the same time, a whole new dynamic has entered the equation. It is clear to everyone on the inside that the parasitic world financial system is moving swiftly towards the abyss—even if they all agree that “outsiders” should not be allowed to suspect this just yet. Don’t speak of another 2007-09 collapse. History does not repeat itself—while additionally it is clear that the resources used to cover over that earlier phase of collapse no longer exist after years of quantitative easing and zero or even negative interest rates.

From the top, this Phase Three owes its suddenness and its surprising virulence—given that none of the previous charges against the President could be substantiated—to the masters in London, who cannot tolerate the thought that when their system blows out, the United States will be headed by a figure who will probably not behave himself and act on their orders as George W. Bush and Barack Obama did earlier. Meanwhile, down below, on the level of the dirty intelligence operatives and suchlike, their high dudgeon stems from their hope that when the Horowitz and Barr-Durham reports finally appear and incriminate them, those reports can be written off, as somehow the products of a President desperately trying to avoid impeachment. (A part which he refuses to play.)

London apparently hopes that the impeachment charade can impede the President, or take his eyes off the financial collapse, at a coming crucial moment. It succeeded in intimidating Bill Clinton out of his proposals for a “new world financial architecture” by means of an equally worthless impeachment-charade earlier.

A Concert of Powers for Peace on Earth

Thus, at the present moment, we, the loyal Americans, are called to a complicated sort of war on two fronts, which will combine, intertwine, and then separate again, forcing us to be ever on the alert in our decidedly “unconventional” tactics. While continuing to creatively use the LaRouche case in the battle, we can now bring in massive evidence regarding Obama’s corrupt operation with neo-Nazis in Ukraine, which the adversary has thrown into the impeachment fight, and which was one of Lyndon LaRouche’s key preoccupations at the end of his life. At the same time, the financial crisis can only be undone through an approach coherent with Lyndon LaRouche’s principles of economics. And now, unlike in 2007-09, we have a President able to take that step.

What is allowing this to happen now, are the massive changes that have occurred in China and Russia as well as the United States. All three nations have been involved in the revolutionary progress seen in Syria, where China has volunteered to come in and lead postwar reconstruction efforts as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. Russia’s just concluded, historic conference with Africa featured the great majority of Africa’s heads of state or government. The ability at last to achieve a concert of the major powers, for peace on earth, for peaceful exploration of space, and for the new world credit system designed by LaRouche after Franklin Roosevelt’s precedent, is a sure support to our efforts and a visible guarantee that they can be effective, as we enter this super-complex battlefield.

EIR Contents

www.larouchepub.com — Volume 46, Number 43, November 1, 2019

Cover This Week

Sculpture by Daniel Chester French

Abraham Lincoln sits in contemplation in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

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WINNING THE PEACE

2 EDITORIAL

The Challenge of War is Its Challenge to the Mind

by Tony Papert

I. THE STRATEGIC SHIFT

5 PRESIDENT TRUMP TO THE NATION

A Major Breakthrough for Syria and the Middle East

9 Trump and Putin Put Syria on the Road to Peace

by Carl Osgood

12 New Wall Street Crisis: This Time, LaRouche’s Policies Must Be Adopted

by Paul Gallagher

II. STRATEGY IN DEPTH

16 Ukrainegate, or the Coup Against President Donald Trump—Phase Three

by Barbara Boyd

27 ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST

The Tables Have Turned on the Coup Plotters and Global Central Bankers

35 Russia’s Historic Initiative: In Sochi, the First Russia-Africa Summit

by Christine Bierre

39 Russia Offers Africa ‘Atoms for Peace’

42 THE NEW PARADIGM ADVANCES

Kenyan Standard Gauge Rail Successful in Looking Beyond the Here and Now

by Mark Bender

III. WHERE ARE THE LEADERS?

45 THE TRUE STATESMAN

The Historical Individual

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

October 20, 2002

56 AMERICA AWAKENS IN A TIME OF CRISIS

William Livingston, Alexander McDougall & the Committees of Correspondence

by Robert Ingraham

The Jan. 27, 1989 Jailing of Lyndon LaRouche

Defined an Era, Which Now Must End

Watch The LaRouche Case video

Watch the LaRouche Memorial video

Sign the Petition to Exonerate LaRouche

at lpac.co/exonerate

I. The Strategic Shift

PRESIDENT TRUMP TO THE NATION

A Major Breakthrough for

Syria and the Middle East

White House/D. Myles Cullen

President Trump addresses the nation from the White House on October 23, 2019. He is joined by Vice President Mike Pence (on Trump’s right) and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (on Trump’s immediate left).

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The following is the transcript of remarks made by President Trump on the situation in northern Syria, from the White House on October 23, 2019. The title and subheads have been added.

My fellow Americans, I greet you this morning from the White House to announce a major breakthrough toward achieving a better future for Syria and for the Middle East. It’s been a long time.

Over the last five days, you have seen that a ceasefire that we established along Syria’s border has held, and it’s held very well, beyond most expectations. Early this morning, the government of Turkey informed my administration that they would be stopping combat and their offensive in Syria, and making the ceasefire permanent, and it will indeed be permanent. However you would also define the word “permanent” in that part of the world as somewhat questionable, we all understand that. But I do believe it will be permanent.

I have therefore instructed the Secretary of the Treasury to lift all sanctions imposed on October 14th, in response to Turkey’s original offensive moves against the Kurds in Syria’s northeast border region. So the sanctions will be lifted unless something happens that we’re not happy with.

This was an outcome created by us, the United States, and nobody else, no other nation, very simple. And we’re willing to take blame, and we’re also willing to take credit. This is something they’ve been trying to do for many, many decades. Since then, others have come out to help, and we welcome them to do so. Other countries have stepped forward; they want to help, and we think that’s great. The nations in the region must ultimately take on the responsibility of helping Turkey and Syria police their border. We want other nations to get involved.

We’ve secured the oil, and, therefore, a small number of U.S. troops will remain in the area where they have the oil. And we’re going to be protecting it, and we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future.

A Much More Peaceful, Stable Area Between Turkey and Syria

In any event, by the moves that we’ve made, we are achieving a much more peaceful and stable area between Turkey and Syria, including a 20-mile-wide safe zone, an interesting term, “safe zone.” That’s the term we’re using it. Hopefully, that zone will become safe. Thousands and thousands of people have been killed in that zone over the years. But it’s been sought for many, many decades, and I think we have something that’s going to be strong and hold up.

CC/Kurdishstruggle

Kurdish YPG fighters on December 29, 2018.

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Turkey, Syria, and all forms of the Kurds, have been fighting for centuries. We have done them a great service, and we’ve done a great job for all of them. And now we’re getting out. A long time, we were supposed to be there for 30 days; that was almost 10 years ago. So we’re there for 30 days, and now we’re leaving. It was supposed to be a very quick hit and let’s get out. And it was a quick hit, except they stayed for almost 10 years. Let someone else fight over this long-bloodstained sand.

I want to thank Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Pompeo for leading the American delegation so successfully to Turkey several days ago, along with National Security Advisor O’Brien. I want to thank them very much. The American delegation negotiated the original five-day ceasefire that ended [enabled] Kurdish fighters to safely leave. It just got them to a point where, frankly, they were able. It enabled them to get out, to go and move, really, just a few miles in a slightly different direction. So this enabled them to do so.

Countless lives are now being saved as a result of our negotiation with Turkey—an outcome reached without spilling one drop of American blood. No injuries. Nobody shot, nobody killed.

We Saved Thousands of Kurdish Lives

I have just spoken to General Mazloum, a wonderful man, the Commander-in-Chief of the SDF Kurds. And he was extremely thankful for what the United States has done. Could not have been more thankful. General Mazloum has assured me that ISIS is under very, very strict lock and key, and the detention facilities are being strongly maintained. There were a few that got out—a small number, relatively speaking—and they’ve been largely recaptured.

I’m also sure that he will be issuing his own statement very shortly. We had a great talk. But we’ve saved the lives of many, many Kurds. He understands that. The war was going to be vicious and probably not very long. And I’m very happy to have been involved in it, as are our Vice President, our Secretary of State, and all of the other people on our team. By getting that ceasefire to stick, we’ve done something that’s very, very special. But by getting the ceasefire after a tremendous amount of really tough war for a very short period of days, that is something very special.

Our troops are safe, and the pain and suffering of the three-day fight that occurred was directly responsible for our ability to make an agreement with Turkey and the Kurds that could never have been made without this short-term outburst.

Should Turkey fail to honor its obligations, including the protection of religious and ethnic minorities—which I truly believe they will do—we reserve the right to re-impose crippling sanctions, including substantially increased tariffs on steel and all other products coming out of Turkey.

We Are an Economic Powerhouse

We are now an economic powerhouse like never before, and, very importantly, like no other. Our economic might is stronger than it’s ever been, and our competitors are not doing very well.

We also expect Turkey to abide by its commitment regarding ISIS. As a backup to the Kurds watching over them, should something happen, Turkey is there to grab them.

Further, we implore European countries to come and take those fighters that the U.S. captured and bring them back to their countries for incarceration and for trial. Until just recently, Europe has been very unresponsive in doing what they should have been doing for a long time. Now is their chance to finally act.

White House/D. Myles Cullen

Left to right: Vice President Mike Pence, President Donald Trump, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

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American forces defeated 100 percent of the ISIS caliphate during the last two years. We thank the Syrian Democratic Forces for their sacrifices in this effort. They’ve been terrific. Now Turkey, Syria, and others in the region must work to ensure that ISIS does not regain any territory. It’s their neighborhood; they have to maintain it. They have to take care of it.

There were some political pundits who responded to Turkey’s offensive in Syria by calling for yet another American military intervention. I don’t think so. But halting the incursion by military force would have required deploying tens of thousands of American troops against Turkey—a NATO Ally and a country the United States has developed a very good relationship with, including President Erdŏgan.

The same people that I watched and read—giving me and the United States advice—were the people that I have been watching and reading for many years. They are the ones that got us into the Middle East mess but never had the vision or the courage to get us out. They just talk.

How many Americans must die in the Middle East in the midst of these ancient sectarian and tribal conflicts? After all of the precious blood and treasure America has poured into the deserts of the Middle East, I am committed to pursuing a different course—one that leads to victory for America.

DoS/Ron Przysucha

Vice President Mike Pence delivers remarks at a press conference in Ankara, Turkey on October 17, 2019. With him is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

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We Avoided a Costly U.S. Military Intervention

Through much work, we have done things that everybody said couldn’t be done. Today’s announcement validates our course of action with Turkey that only a couple of weeks ago were scorned, and now people are saying, “Wow. What a great outcome. Congratulations.” It’s too early to me to be congratulated, but we’ve done a good job. We’ve saved a lot of lives.

Most importantly, we have avoided another costly military intervention that could’ve led to disastrous, far-reaching consequences. Many thousands of people could’ve been killed.

The last administration said, “Assad must go.” They could’ve easily produced that outcome, but they didn’t. In fact, they drew a very powerful red line in the sand—you all remember, the red line in the sand—when children were gassed and killed, but then did not honor their commitment as other children died in the same horrible manner. But I did honor my commitments with 58 Tomahawks.

Eight long years after President Obama’s ill-fated push at regime change, U.S. troops are still on the ground in Syria. More than half a million people are dead, hundreds of thousands are terribly injured, and millions more Syrians are displaced. It really is a nightmare of misery.

Across the Middle East, we have seen anguish on a colossal scale. We have spent $8 trillion on wars in the Middle East, never really wanting to win those wars. But after all that money was spent and all of those lives lost, the young men and women gravely wounded—so many—the Middle East is less safe, less stable, and less secure than before these conflicts began.

The same people pushing for these wars are often the ones demanding America open its doors to unlimited migration from war-torn regions, importing the terrorism and the threat of terrorism right to our own shores. But not anymore. My administration understands that immigration security is national security.

Our New Approach to Foreign Policy Works

As a candidate for President, I made clear that we needed a new approach to American foreign policy, one guided not by ideology, but by experience, history, and a realistic understanding of the world.

We are building up America’s military might like never before, investing $2.5 trillion since my election. But we will not be depleted. We will not [let that] happen again. It will not be allowed to happen again, where our military is depleted, fighting in areas of the world where we shouldn’t be.

When we commit American troops to battle, we must do so only when a vital national interest is at stake, and when we have a clear objective, a plan for victory, and a path out of conflict. That’s what we have to have. We need a plan of victory. We will only win. Our whole basis has to be the right plan, and then we will only win. Nobody can beat us. Nobody can beat us.

I want to again thank everyone on the American team who helped achieve the ceasefire in Syria, saved so many lives, along with President Erdŏgan of Turkey—a man I’ve gotten to know very well and a man who loves his country. And, in his mind, he’s doing the right thing for his country, and we may be meeting in the very near future.

VOA Kurdish

Gen. Mazloum Kobani Abdi

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

I also want to thank General Mazloum for his understanding and for his great strength and for his incredible words today to me—but me just as a representative of the United States—because he knows that we saved tens of thousands of Kurds. And we’re not talking in the long term, we’re talking in the short term. We’re talking something that was going on immediately and something, frankly, that was planned for a long time.

The job of our military is not to police the world. Other nations must step up and do their fair share. That hasn’t taken place. Today’s breakthrough is a critical step in that direction.

Thank you all very much, and God bless America. Thank you. Thank you.

Trump and Putin Put Syria

On the Road to Peace

by Carl Osgood

SANA

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a rare public appearance as he visited elated troops on the front line in areas newly freed from rebel control in eastern Ghouta, near Damascus, March 19, 2018.

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Oct. 26—Seven years ago, on Oct. 28, 2011, American statesman and EIR founder Lyndon LaRouche warned that the murder of Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi, carried out by Libyan militants with the aid of an American drone about a week earlier, signaled the potential for an early outbreak of more general warfare within Europe, the Mediterranean region, and beyond. The ultimate target of these British-French-U.S. wars in the Mediterranean region and beyond, LaRouche said, was a direct confrontation with Russia. The anti-Russian coup in Ukraine was still more than two years ahead, as was the regime-change war in Syria, an ally of Russia, and the Saudi coalition war on Yemen.

LaRouche wrote then:

Most notably, this immediate threat has now developed in the setting of the fact, that the present patterns of warfare within Southwest Asia have created a new type of cancerous development, a development which has now replaced the former role which the Balkans once played in the patterns of “world wars” of the Twentieth Century, for the prospective new “world war” of the Twenty-first Century. Like the role of the Balkans in the period of two preceding “World Wars” since the British alliance with Japan in launching those two “World Wars” of the past century, the chronic, and spreading warfare within the chronic cockpit of Southwest Asia, has now reached the condition that, during many recent decades, that region of Asia has superseded the old role of “Balkan Wars” as the now present style of catalyst for a now threatened “Third World War.”

LaRouche did not name Syria in that particular paper, but events and revelations within a year would show that Syria—in the aftermath of the destruction of Libya, led by the UK, the U.S., and France—was indeed the next immediate target of the British and President Barack Obama’s administration. The destruction of Libya was, in fact, the beginning of an alliance between the Obama Administration and a collection of al-Qaeda-Muslim Brotherhood jihadi groups, first overthrowing the Libyan government and then to overthrow the duly elected government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

In Syria, the CIA, and then the Pentagon, ran programs to train and arm al-Qaeda factions operating under the Orwellian name of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), to fight against the Assad government. When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), itself an outgrowth of al-Qaeda in Iraq, first swept out of Iraq and into Syria, the Obama Administration turned to fight it in Syria, but consciously decided to do so by creating its own proxy army in Syria, a deliberate violation of Syrian sovereignty. Though the public policy was to fight ISIS, the ulterior motive of the Obama Administration remained regime change in Damascus.

Obama’s Armies War on One Another

After President Trump canceled the CIA and Pentagon programs to arm the FSA, the FSA’s jihadi factions were given over to the Muslim Brotherhood government of Turkey, and eventually united into the so-called Syrian National Army (SNA). Ankara deployed this now-Turkish proxy army in its interventions in Syria: Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Aleppo province in 2016, Operation Olive Branch in 2018, and then Operation Peace Spring beginning Oct. 9, 2019. Since the Turkish army began its recent incursion into northern Syria, elements of the SNA have been implicated in numerous war crimes, including the murder of a Kurdish political leader and two others who were traveling with her.

These are the same folks who were labeled “moderate rebels” by the Obama team. “This disturbing context was conveniently omitted from the breathless denunciations [of these murders] of U.S. officials and Western pundits,” wrote investigative journalist Max Blumenthal in an Oct. 16 article posted on his Grayzone website.

The real irony is that the Turkish proxy army, which is now attacking the Kurds, and the Kurdish proxy army, which was originally trained and armed to fight ISIS and overthrow Assad, both started life as creations of the Obama Administration. The Obama policy always was regime change in Damascus. This pattern of warfare—using proxy armies to fight regime-change wars—is now being brought to an end in Syria through the collaboration of President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite the howls of rage coming from the neo-con war party in Washington and the British Imperialists in London.

Click here to watch the interview

Click here to watch the interview

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What has happened since Oct. 6, when President Trump first announced—following a phone discussion with Turkey’s President Erdŏgan—that he was withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria, is that Trump and Putin together have changed the strategic calculus and have opened the door to peace in Syria, after eight years of foreign-supported terrorist warfare against Syria’s government and people.

This followed a number of occasions on which President Trump refused to launch military strikes on Iran, particularly after Iranian air defenses shot down a U.S. reconnaissance drone on June 20, and again after the Sept. 14 drone/cruise missile strikes on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. The latter were attacks that the U.S. government blamed on Iran but were claimed by the Houthi Ansarullah movement of Yemen, in the context of the Saudi war in their country.

Trump then followed his refusals to launch military strikes with public attacks on the military-industrial complex, directly referring to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous warning in his 1961 farewell address.

Syria’s military forces crossed the Euphrates River from Manbij to Tabqa, and then spread across the region from Raqqa, to Hasakah, reaching Qamishli on the Turkish border—reasserting the sovereignty of the duly elected Syrian government.

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Syria’s Sovereignty Returns

The corporate media describe the situation in the northeast of Syria—since Turkey’s incursion and Trump’s decision to withdraw—as “chaos and butchery.” They are refusing to report that what Trump and Putin have accomplished with a series of successive agreements between Turkey and Kurdish leaders: Full Syrian sovereignty over nearly one-third of its territory east of the Euphrates River is now being reestablished. In the immediate aftermath of the Turkish incursion into northern Syria on Oct. 9, the insurgent SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) made a deal with Damascus that allowed Syrian military forces to cross the Euphrates River from Manbij in the north to Tabqa, about 90 km downstream, and spread across the region from Raqqa, northeast to Hasakah, and further northeast to Qamishli on the Turkish border, to begin to reassert the sovereignty of the duly elected Syrian government in that region.

Trump may not be talking directly to Syrian leaders about the extension of Syrian sovereignty, only agreeing with Putin to allow it to happen, but this enables an end to Obama’s seven-and-a-half-year war against Syria. The majority of the “safe zone” that Turkey demanded, an area considerably larger than the 120 km by 32 km zone that Turkish troops now occupy, is actually being patrolled by Syrian border guards with Russian military police, not by Turkish forces. Both Trump and Putin are also calling for Turkey-Syria government negotiations, with Moscow being in a crucial position to help make that happen, even with the hostility that currently characterizes relations between the two governments.

In parallel with this, the Syrian “Constitutional Committee”—an important fruit of the Astana process led by Russia, Turkey and Iran—is moving forward with its first meeting scheduled for Geneva on Oct. 29-30. Despite being denounced and ridiculed in the corporate media, the Astana process is achieving what the UN-led Geneva process could not, a process leading to a political settlement of the Syrian war.

New Wall Street Crisis: This Time, LaRouche’s Policies Must Be Adopted

by Paul Gallagher

Oct. 26—If you are a senior banking official who attended the IMF/World Bank meetings in Washington last week, you know that the banking system, centered in London and Wall Street, is right now in a worse crisis than anything since the crash of 2008.

The closed circle of U.S. mega-banks suddenly sprang a very large liquidity leak in the middle of September, requiring the Federal Reserve to inject tens of billions of dollars in short-term loans into it every morning since; and the hole is still getting bigger. The IMF itself gave you its report at those meetings; nothing like the usual reassurances—red-light warnings instead were issued about the gigantic corporate debt bubble and bond funds going illiquid. You were warned that the “shadow banks” in India have developed serious problems, threatening India’s commercial banks.

And you’ve become aware of huge protest demonstrations against economic austerity breaking out all over South America, the Mideast, and even parts of Europe. Far-right governments you cheered on, and “economic adjustment” programs you devised, have failed spectacularly; they’ve created local financial blowups in those countries which now are making your own bank crisis worse!

But if you are not such a senior banker, you probably haven’t heard anything about this financial crisis, although it’s right upon us, and may soon be worse than 2007-08. You’ve seen little or nothing about the popular uprisings—except for the one against China in Hong Kong. Impeachment, war and party politics have consumed your news media.

If you have become a reader of publications of Lyndon LaRouche’s movement, however, such as Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), you know that this crisis is underway. You realize the brief industrial and manufacturing recovery in America, during the past two years, has ended and gone into reverse. Here we discuss what we are called on to do, in the face of a crash threatening to be worse than that of 2008.

Glass-Steagall: Stabilizing the Crisis

In what is actually now a financial collapse, already in its opening stages, carrying out Lyndon LaRouche’s economic policies for such a situation are critical. The “overnight bank liquidity crisis” that broke out in mid-September has intensified since then. It shows that the immense bubble of corporate and household debt[fn_1]—securitized by banks, investment firms, hedge funds—is now riddled with assets that are too toxic to borrow against any longer, and those firms are scrounging for liquid cash. The largest “too-big-to-fail” banks now will not lend it to them, so they are demanding it from the Federal Reserve; and it may well be that one or more of those biggest banks is in the same situation and suddenly depending on the Fed to keep it alive. In 2007-08 Citigroup was bankrupt during the entire period in which it was borrowing $2.5 trillion in such Fed loans.

We don’t know who it is now, because the Fed will not reveal the institutions to which it is making tens of billions of dollars of liquidity loans every day.

IMF/Stephen Jaffe

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva projects a collapse in world GDP, one of many results of the current bankrupt financial system, at the 2019 IMF Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. on October 8, 2019.

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But the IMF itself gave a strong suggestion in its Global Financial Stability Report 2019: A large portion of the big bond funds that invest in the $15 trillion bond markets are short of liquidity and cannot pay off their investors. The report added a second alarm: In the oncoming recession, as much as 40-45% of the companies that owe some $19 trillion in corporate debt, won’t be able to even make interest payments. And this problem will quickly spread—by what the financial world calls “contagion.” Mutual funds hold almost $1 trillion of the securities by which the banks have “securitized” this failing corporate debt. Debt-zombie corporations are creating zombie hedge funds and zombie investment firms. The Federal Reserve is injecting more and more liquidity loans every day—$134 billion on Oct. 24 alone, for example—to keep this “everything bubble” of debt from imploding.

WEF/swiss-image.ch/Remy Steinegger

James Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., in 2013.

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Bankers are making panicked proposals that would have disastrous consequences if they were to be implemented. Jamie Dimon, CEO of Wall Street’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase, asserted on Oct. 18 that bank capital regulations were causing the banking system’s sudden liquidity crisis and should all be removed. On Oct. 20, the former head of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, predicted “financial Armageddon” unless the Federal Reserve was given new powers and resources to bail out any bank—or any other financial company—at any time. And most shocking, the current Bank of England head Mark Carney proposed to replace the U.S. dollar in international trade with a global electronic currency controlled by the Bank of England and the other major central banks. These wild proposals smell of the failure of bank policies since the last financial crash, which have brought us to the verge of another.

The only action that will stabilize the banking system and protect it from an otherwise inevitable crash, is action by Congress to restore the Glass-Steagall Act—the first of LaRouche’s “Four Laws to Save the Nation” and the economy. Glass-Steagall must be reimposed now, before a financial blowout hits. Glass-Steagall separates commercial, deposit-and-loan banking from all investment banking and other speculators that securitize and trade debt, multiplying it hundreds of times by derivatives bets. Glass-Steagall protects and insures only commercial banking, and leaves the speculators to sink or swim with no taxpayer backup, explicit or implicit. The immediate effect will be that investment, including the investment of ordinary citizens through pension funds, mutual funds, and 401(k)s, will withdraw from such speculative Wall Street operations, many of which will not survive. But commercial banking will survive to help power an economic recovery.

Lyndon LaRouche announced the banking system was crashing in an international broadcast in July 2007—14 months before Wall Street went belly-up—and immediately put forward Glass-Steagall, combined with a national moratorium on home foreclosures, in legislation called the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act (HBPA). State legislatures all over the country adopted resolutions calling on Congress to act on LaRouche’s proposed legislation. Members of Congress were scared away from introducing it by threats directly from financial speculators, including George Soros, who told them LaRouche’s HBPA would cause a crash. It was not introduced; and that caused the crash.

CC/Carlos Figueroa

Massive anti-austerity demonstration at the Plaza Banquedano in Santiago, Chile on October 22, 2019.

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British Warning of Those Mass Protests

Wall Street and London pressure has forced out governments in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Brazil, and Italy, which were investing in their economies, and replaced them with governments serving the debt and currency speculators. The disastrous failures of these “free trade” governments have set off mass protests. London now screams that the protests are worsening the financial crisis! The British news agency Reuters on October 24 led with, “An alarming spread of street protests and civil unrest across the world in recent weeks looms large on the radar of financial markets.” Why?

Because those nations may have to respond by stopping the austerity and spending more on services and social security for their own populations. “Forced fiscal loosening in a world already swamped with debt and heading into another downturn may unnerve creditors and bond holders,” Reuters worried. The nervous creditors and bondholders are the same London and Wall Street banks already in trouble.

LaRouche spelled out as his “Second Law,” in 2014, that what is needed for recovery is not primarily more money to spend, but credit issued through national banking. Alexander Hamilton launched the industrial development of the new United States with credit for infrastructure and manufacturing issued by a national bank, even though the new government in 1789 had nothing in the Treasury but debts.

In the United States today, investment in basic economic infrastructure is at a 50-year low; growth of industrial productivity has vanished since 2007; business investment in capital equipment has slowed to a crawl. Less than 10% of American workers produce goods, and many capabilities to recover from a crisis have been lost as of now.[fn_2] At the same time as Glass-Steagall is restored—which will actually subtract much of the speculative “investment” from the economy—“Hamiltonian” national banking institutions will have to be set up by Congress to issue large amounts of credit for high-technology investment, increasing productivity and productive employment. The leading investment category will be new basic economic infrastructure, such as the high-speed transportation corridors—which will include rail, communications, and electric power—now being built on Chinese initiative across Asia into Europe, and into Southeast Asia and the Mideast.

LPAC

EIRNS/Brian McAndrews

Organizers campaign for LaRouche’s Homeowners and Bank Protection Act (HBPA), May 2008.

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LaRouche’s economics team for EIR had already demonstrated during the 1980-81 deep recession that investment in new, advanced infrastructure is the key to increasing productivity. Increasing real technological productivity is what makes possible powering through even a collapse on Wall Street and relaunching real economic growth.

Science Drivers

In this financial crisis, the Federal Reserve’s printing of many trillions of dollars for the “green new deal” of Sen. Bernie Sanders would be just as bad as the Fed printing trillions to throw into the Wall Street banks, as it did from 2007-2015 and is now doing again. Going backward in crucial energy and power technologies will not increase productivity; it will lower it.

LaRouche specified another law: “Science driver” missions must be supported with both credit and spending to lead the recovery. That means the mission to the Moon and Mars re-launched by President Donald Trump, and a crash program to develop fusion power. Like the “Apollo Project” 50 years ago, the Moon-Mars mission will repay the economy five, ten, or perhaps as much as 15 dollars for every dollar put into it. Fusion power breakthroughs will spin off new technologies that will completely redefine resources for Earth-based industry and will provide hyper-fast travel to other planets.

One can not know exactly when this growing financial crisis will turn into a collapse of markets; it is not a simple repetition of the global crash of 2007-08. Then, massive real estate and derivatives speculation suddenly brought down the banks and triggered the so-called “great recession” with mass unemployment and $10 trillion in wealth lost by American households. We see such real estate hyper-speculation hitting banks in some nations now, notably India and Turkey.

The IMF is warning that what it calls the “global slowdown” now underway—industrial recessions, zero productivity growth, and zero trade growth—could be the trigger this time. Ten years of crazy zero interest rates and money printing by central banks have built up unprecedented bubbles of corporate and household debt, which, when economies start contracting, will become masses of non-performing assets for the banks.

In whichever case, the financial breakdown will be sudden, and action must be taken before it happens. Lyndon LaRouche made clear what those actions are to be.

[fn_1]. A series of charts is available at https://realinvestmentadvice.com/how-corporate-debt-confirms-the-everything-bubble/ [back to text for fn_1]

[fn_2]. See EIR’s July special issue, “The Bitter Truth About the U.S. Economic ‘Recovery’,” https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2019/eirv46n27-20190712/index.html [back to text for fn_2]

II. Strategy in Depth

Ukrainegate, or the Coup Against President Donald Trump—Phase Three

by Barbara Boyd

Oct. 27—A parade of Washington’s unelected diplomatic elite has been appearing before the House Intelligence Committee in a tiny room in the House basement, a SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility), walled off from the world by a blanket of electronic security to enforce absolute, total secrecy. There, in a proceeding reminding most of the British Star Chamber, they are making claims against a man they hate, a man whom the voters elected in 2016 to throw them all out of any power whatsoever over the nation—the President of the United States.

Gage Skidmore

Joseph R. Biden, Sr.

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They are claiming that President Trump withheld necessary military aid for Ukraine in exchange for a promise by the Ukrainians to investigate Joe Biden and his cocaine-addled son, Hunter. This is the so-called “impeachment inquiry” which follows two previous impeachment campaigns in sequence, launched by the Democrats and the Anglo-American defense and intelligence establishment on the day Donald Trump won the election.

In this brief we will show you that Donald Trump should have withheld military aid from the Ukrainians, but for a reason different than that stated. And, we will demonstrate that Joe Biden should be investigated, for supervising a coup, led by neo-Nazis in Ukraine, which has collapsed that country. Thousands have been killed or fled the country. Many of the foreign policy mandarins now testifying against Trump were Biden’s managers of that horrific crime, and other similar crimes, which have created America’s “forever” wars. Joe Biden otherwise played a key role as Obama’s Vice President in the 2016-2017 illegalities against candidate and President-elect Donald Trump, actively joining a small group of “principals” discussing and implementing the propaganda campaign intended to defeat Trump by smearing him as a Russian agent.

After the string of illegalities against Trump, which continued through his firing of FBI Director James Comey, and after the brutal Robert Mueller inquisition, which destroyed many lives but came up empty as to any crimes by the President, we have now entered phase three of the coup against the President. As Congressman Al Green (D-TX) and even Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have admitted: Iimpeachment now is necessary because, without it, Trump will win a second term. The same sentiment was pronounced by the British House of Lords in their 2018 Report, “UK Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order,” in an order to their American satrapy: a second Trump term must not happen.

Everyone who has appeared before the House Intelligence Committee so far, is up to their ears in U.S./British regime-change operations, particularly the one conducted by the Obama Administration in 2013-2014 in Ukraine, where Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland engineered regime change on Russia’s border, using Neo-Nazis as muscle, and creating a post-coup vassal-state which included the very same Neo-Nazis as government officials. Joe Biden, who served as the Obama Administration’s “point man” on Ukraine, and Biden’s State Department, National Endowment for Democracy, and Atlantic Council buddies misnamed their atrocity, the “Revolution of Dignity.” Victoria Nuland, the case officer with Joe Biden for the coup, says the United States spent $5 billion dollars in creating this fiasco. Her figures do not include substantial funds delivered by the British government and NATO, along with George Soros and other privateers.

CC/Mstyslav Chernov

A convoy of Russia-backed rebel armored fighting vehicles near Donetsk, Eastern Ukraine on May 30, 2015.

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Like other regime-change wars, most prominently Iraq, this one installed a government of colonial administrators, and resulted in a perfectly predictable, violent insurgency from those sections of Ukraine that would never agree to an occupation government, particularly after being attacked by the coup’s “Right Sector” neo-Nazis. In Ukraine, this insurgency involved the Russian-speaking population of Eastern Ukraine, the Donbass, where, after the coup, the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk declared themselves autonomous Republics. There is plenty of evidence that the insurgency was provoked to facilitate a full-scale ethnic cleansing of this asset-rich area which formerly housed that nation’s manufacturing capacity and skilled workforce.

The conflict in the Donbass has killed over 13,000 people to date. And the coup resulted in the further disintegration of Ukraine into Europe’s poorest country. The operation replaced one set of corrupt oligarchs who stole the country’s riches after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but were considered “soft” on Russia, with a different set of oligarchs who have voiced a desire to go to war with Russia, while continuing the stealing.

Biden, Ukraine, and Burisma

This is the context for the real Joe Biden corruption story in Ukraine and his son’s estimated $3 million dollar haul from one of the largest and most corrupt Ukrainian gas and oil companies: Burisma. This is a story about the obsession of Joe Biden and others who went out to cripple Russia’s economy by shutting down the gas transit lines that pass from Russia, through Ukraine, to Europe, while supplying Ukraine through Western oil companies shepherded into the country by Biden, along with a scheme for fracking in the war-torn Donbass. They pursued this while overtly threatening Russia with nuclear war, facilitated by their new vassal state, Ukraine, on Russia’s border—placing the entire world in jeopardy by their madness. To accomplish his gas gambit, Biden had to capture Burisma.

Many of the British and American intelligence operatives who accomplished the Ukraine “regime change” in 2014, turned their attention, in 2016, to destroying the political candidacy of Donald Trump, smearing him as a Manchurian candidate because he publicly stated a desire for better relations with Russia.

When Rudy Giuliani started to investigate Kiev’s role in the illegal 2016 attempt to defeat Donald Trump, he touched a “third rail” of British and American intelligence, one that goes all the way back to British and American adoption and support of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) led by Stepan Bandera and Mykola Lebed. Bandera was an MI-6 agent, Lebed became CIA. Earlier, during World War II, in collaboration with the Nazis, they slaughtered thousands of Poles and Jews—all in the name of defeating Russia. The Right Sector groups used by Joe Biden for the coup and subsequently installed in the government, idolize Stepan Bandera.

Now that Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham have, as anticipated, undertaken a full criminal investigation of the U.S., British and other intelligence figures who led the 2016-2017 effort to defeat Donald Trump and subvert his presidency, the Ukrainian aspect of this operation has become a very, very hot potato.

The appearance of the bogus Ukraine-aid “whistleblower”—himself, we now know, a CIA agent, expert in Ukraine, who previously worked with Joe Biden in the Obama White House—represents an effort to block this story from serious investigation at all costs. It also aims to delegitimize the entire Barr/Durham criminal investigation, as well as the imminent report of the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Both DOJ investigations center on illegalities in the first stage of the coup against Trump, prior to Mueller’s appointment as Special Counsel. And, most important, the bogus impeachment “inquiry” is yet another full-spectrum information-warfare operation, using the media, fed by cascading, 24/7 bogus headlines and leaks from the intelligence community and the Democrats in Congress, to tank the President’s standing with the American people and either impeach him or defeat him in 2020.

Right Sector actions in Ukraine during the Maidan coup. Top: a “peaceful demonstration.” Later they had guns. Middle: Poster of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, agents of the Abwehr (German military intelligence). Bottom: A torchlight parade in Kiev, Jan. 1, 2014.

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The Present Charade

We now know that the bogus whistleblower worked, covertly, with Congressman Adam Schiff’s staff to launder leaks about the President’s July 25th phone call with incoming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, into a new bogus narrative about the President. This whistleblower is represented by a law firm that has actively sought whistleblowers from the intelligence agencies against the President, posting leaflets and billboard ads outside the agencies and offering to cover any and all expenses.

He was also assisted by a new Inspector General (IG) of the Intelligence Community, Michael Atkinson, who dubbed his bogus complaint “credible” and “urgent.” Atkinson migrated from the leadership of the National Security Division of the Justice Department—a central control point in Phases 1 and 2 of the coup—to the IG post, and promptly rewrote the rules so that whistleblower complaints could be based on total hearsay and gossip, rather than first-hand knowledge. In Atkinson’s January 2019 confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner (D-VA) charged him with a mission of protecting whistleblowers first and foremost. This was most strange coming from a committee that has repeatedly acquiesced in the destruction of actual whistleblowers such as Tom Drake, Bill Binney, Jeff Sterling, and Julian Assange.

EU

Newly-elected President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, at a press conference of the EU-Ukraine Summit in Kiev, July 8, 2019.

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Surprise: the Transcript

To the surprise of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the coup’s strategists, the President released the actual transcript of his July 25th phone conversation with President Zelensky, which, in any reasonable culture, should have ended the entire affair. The bogus whistleblower’s gossip was proven demonstrably false by the transcript. Washington, D.C. is not, presently, such a culture.

In the call, President Trump congratulated Zelensky on his victory in the parliamentary elections, and Zelensky promptly announced that he would be reforming his government to clean up its legendary and horrific corruption. The President and Zelensky discussed the fact that the United States is shouldering the burden of support for Ukraine, while Germany and other European countries, which have the most immediate strategic interest, are not contributing enough.

In the portion of the call the Democrats are trying to make an impeachable crime, President Trump said he was concerned about Ukraine’s intervention into the 2016 U.S. election on behalf of Hillary Clinton and expressed concern that Zelensky is surrounded by some of the same people who conducted those activities. Trump asked whether the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer server examined by CrowdStrike is in the possession of a Ukrainian oligarch. He asks Zelensky to work with Attorney General Barr, who is conducting the investigation into the 2016 presidential election illegalities. He characterizes this request to investigate possible Ukrainian illegalities in the 2016 election, and to speak with Attorney General Barr, as doing him (Trump) a “favor.”

The “favor,” it is clear, had nothing to do with the 2020 elections or asking Ukraine to “attack” Democrats and Joe Biden, as repeatedly mischaracterized by Democrats and the bogus whistleblower. Instead, it had to do with investigating the ongoing coup in the United States which threatens this nation’s very existence.

U.S. Embassy/Kiev

Former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, in 2016.

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It is Zelensky who brings up Rudy Giuliani, the President’s lawyer, who has been conducting his own investigation of Ukraine’s interference on behalf of Hillary Clinton since January of 2019. The President then says that he had heard that a very good prosecutor in Ukraine was shut down by some very bad people, and that the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was bad news, as were the people she was dealing with. The President then relates that Joe Biden bragged about stopping the prosecution of Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden sat on the Board. He says that whatever Zelensky can tell Attorney General Barr about this would be great. Zelensky responds that Marie Yovanovitch was a bad ambassador as she admired Petro Poroshenko, the previous President, and refused to accept Zelensky’s election.

That’s it. There was absolutely nothing illegal or wrong here, despite the hair-on-fire headlines fulminated daily by the news media and Adam Schiff—the same “walls closing in” nonsense that occurred daily during Russiagate. There is no reference to, “if you do this, I’ll do that.” In fact, the Ukrainians were not even aware that the lethal military aid they were expecting had been placed on temporary hold.

Unfortunately, the President, after the call, approved the lethal military aid to Ukraine which Congress’ war-mongers had ordered up in their continuing destructive madness about “Russia, Russia, Russia.” The aid was issued without any requirement whatsoever that Ukraine produce anything to meet President Trump’s concerns about 2016 election interference or the corruption surrounding Burisma and/or Joe Biden. The aid was issued without any real guarantees in place to ensure that lethal weaponry would not be put in the hands of the various Neo-Nazis integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard and militias, and who are now arrayed against President Zelensky himself, charging that his effort to settle the war in the Donbass is a sell-out to Russia.

Now if the President and his supporters choose to tell the real and whole truth to the American people about what the Ukraine issue is really all about, the impeachers, so desperate to block this from coming to light, will have hoisted themselves on their own petard in true Shakespearian fashion, in the best boomerang imaginable. That story, the real story about Joe Biden, Ukraine corruption, and the Ukrainian role in the effort to fix the 2016 election for Hillary Clinton, is what we will set forth, in summary fashion, in what follows.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (behind her), offer cookies to pro-EU activists in Kiev’s Independence Square (the Maidan) in December 2014.

CC/Chatham House

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Prime Minister of Ukraine in 2014.

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Ukraine 2014-2016

In 2013-2014, the Obama Administration, in conjunction with NATO and the UK government, conducted a coup d’état in Ukraine, replacing its duly elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, with a U.S./British asset, Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Typical of the nature of the coup was the recorded call between the State Department’s Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, in which Nuland dictated that “Yats” (Yatsenyuk) would be the prime minister, and noted that to make all of this work, she had received a call from Jake Sullivan, saying that “you need Joe Biden” and that the Vice-President was “ready to go.”

Sullivan had been one of Hillary Clinton’s main advisors and was now working for Biden. Biden became the Obama Administration’s point man on Ukraine, a modern viceroy, instructing former President Poroshenko so frequently about the minutiae of whom to nominate and how to behave, that even Poroshenko himself finally turned on him.

EIR reported the true story of the coup, initially on Feb. 7, 2014, and as the strategic implications unfolded, on May 16, 2014 and Feb. 24, 2017.

The fascist nature of the coup was very well known at the time. Here is the Guardian from January 29, 2014:

You’d never know from most of the reporting that far right nationalists and fascists have been at the heart of the protests and attacks on government buildings. One of the three main opposition parties heading the campaign is the hard-right, antisemitic Svoboda, whose leader Oleh Tyahnybok claims that the “Moscow-Jewish mafia controls Ukraine.” The party, now running the city of Lviv, led a 15,000 march earlier this month in memory of the Ukrainian fascist leader Stepan Bandera, whose forces fought with the Nazis in the Second World War and took part in massacres of Jews.

The coup occurred as a NATO doctrine called “Prompt First Strike” had been put on the table, insanely geared toward a strategy of fighting and winning a nuclear war, as advantaged by setting up a vassal state, Ukraine, on Russia’s border. The implications were hardly lost on the Russians.

As the result of the coup, Ukraine’s finances were put in the hands of foreigners, most notably the Ukrainian-American Natalie Jaresko, then serving as Chief of the Economic Section at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, who became Finance Minister. The late Robert Parry wrote a devastating exposé in Consortium News, Feb. 18, 2015, of Jaresko’s prior activity parlaying USAID funding in Ukraine into various insider investment deals for herself and others, prior to her assumption of her new post. Other foreigners installed at the behest of the IMF and British and U.S. investors, had similar strange backgrounds and conflicts. They included, for example, the U.S./British asset Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, who became Odessa’s Governor after leading a similar color revolution for the U.S. and Britain in his own country.

Biden’s and Victoria Nuland’s midwifery resulted in a government which had the full participation of the neo-Nazis of the Svoboda Party and other Right Sector fanatics, who were rewarded for their role as provocateurs and shock troops in the Maidan coup. The oligarchs actually running the country were simply reshuffled under Joe Biden, with the sole requirement for success being an expressed hatred of Russia. Under Biden’s support of a ruthless IMF austerity and privatization program, Ukraine, once a vibrant manufacturing and agricultural center, has now descended to become the poorest country in all of Europe.

Biden Uses the Neo-Nazis Against Russia

Joe Biden’s association with neo-Nazis in Ukraine has been continuous. In 2018, his chief foreign policy advisor, Michael Carpenter, welcomed Andrey Parubiy, the speaker of the Parliament in Ukraine, to Washington, and escorted him around town. Parubiy personally founded two neo-Nazi formations. When Carpenter was confronted by journalist Max Blumenthal with this fact, he claimed, falsely, that Parubiy was simply a nationalist and patriot. See Blumenthal’s write-up posted in the Grayzone.

Ukrainian Embassy/Washington

Victoria Nuland meeting with Andrey Parubiy, Vice Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament, at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington on February 26, 2015.

Presidential Administration of Ukraine

Petro Poroshenko, President of Ukraine (2014-2019).

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As 2014 progressed, elections were held, and the oligarch favored by the U.S. and the British, “chocolate king” Petro Poroshenko, was elected President, with Yats as Prime Minister. The neo-Nazis were absorbed into the government and into the war against the citizens of the Donbass who refused to accept the coup’s results. The Banderists became part of the Ukrainian National Guard and received further U.S. and British military training and weapons, under the regime of the brutal Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.

Thanks again to the excellent reporting of Max Blumenthal, we know that one of these groups, the Azov Battalion, has, in turn, trained neo-Nazis internationally, including the Christchurch, New Zealand shooter, the “Rise Above” white nationalists in Orange County, California, and participants in the Charlottesville, Virginia riot in the U.S. It is a token of Joe Biden’s unbounded hubris that he opened his campaign with an attack on President Trump for causing Charlottesville, when the very same Azov Battalion had trained the neo-Nazi provocateurs who precipitated that event.

Burisma, the gas company, whose board Hunter Biden and his partner Devon Archer joined in the spring of 2014, is nominally owed by Mykola Zlochevsky, an oligarch who, as former Minister of Natural Resources for Ukraine, issued major gas and oil licenses to companies he owned. Archer, a former bundler for John Kerry in his 2004 campaign, and Christopher Heinz, John Kerry’s stepson, together with Hunter Biden, were partners in the private equity company Rosemont Seneca Partners, which had been staked with major dough from the Heinz family fortune, courtesy of John Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

According to news reports, when Christopher Heinz heard about Archer and Biden joining Burisma’s Board, he immediately withdrew from association with the separate corporate vehicle set up for that deal. He recognized the obvious problem: The leaders of the coup and Joe Biden had pounded on the theme of ending Ukraine’s notorious corruption as a raison d’étre of the coup; Burisma was notoriously corrupt.

Nonetheless, John Kerry’s former Chief of Staff in the Senate, David Leiter, now became Burisma’s chief lobbyist in Washington. Bell Pottinger had been its chief lobbyist in London. It’s unclear whether that notorious British firm, the author of numerous fake and horrific videos in the run-up to the Iraq War, retained its contract on the British side after Hunter Biden joined Burisima’s board.

At the time, Zlochevsky was under investigation for money laundering by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, which froze $23 million in his City of London bank accounts. But the licenses owned by Burisma, then Ukraine’s largest gas and oil company, were critical to the Biden/State Department effort to end Ukraine’s gas imports and transit of Russian gas to Europe, and to open up the country for exploitation by Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, and others. In April 2014, Joe Biden arrived in Ukraine with an offer of American experts to speed up Ukraine’s gas production, most specifically fracking in the eastern part of the country where Burisma held licenses. He came with a full package from USAID, and a Congressional agenda in Washington promising even more money to exploit Ukrainian fracking production.

Members of the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, posing with swastika and NATO flags, received money from Ukrainian oligarch and Russia hater Ihor Kolomoisky, as well as training, weapons, money, and other support from British and the U.S. sources.

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NATO’s Atlantic Council and Burisma

Joe Biden’s advocacy for seizing Ukraine’s natural gas assets had been a driven obsession of his since at least 2011, when he declared in a speech at the Atlantic Council that the policy was key to unifying NATO and Europe against Russia. Biden was proposing war on Russia’s economy and, in 2014, he needed to control Burisma, with its land and resources, to pursue this mad obsession. Do you really think, now that you understand the context, that Joe Biden didn’t really know anything about Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board and its meaning? But that is exactly what Joe Biden and his media PR lobby have said repeatedly, for weeks now.

Adding to the proof that Joe Biden is lying, is the fact that the entire New York Times editorial board, in the December 25, 2016 issue, publicly called both Bidens out for conflicts of interest in their Ukraine activities, something which really would not go unnoticed in an Obama White House, preoccupied 24/7 with virtue signaling.

Further, at the time Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board, he was also on the Chairman’s Advisory Committee of the National Democratic Institute, a division of the National Endowment for Democracy, and a big player in the Ukraine coup. He also served on the boards of other hardline Democratic foreign policy groups associated with Madeline Albright, the Chairman of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State. Albright, of course, is most remembered for what she said when asked in 1996 if the deaths of half a million Iraqi children, as a result of her sanctions policy against Saddam Hussein, were worth it. She said, “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.”

Complicating the picture even further, Burisma appears to be actually owned by the Ukrainian oligarch and Russia hater, Ihor Kolomoisky, who also owned Ukraine’s largest financial institution, Privat Bank, according to multiple investigators. Kolomoisky has also sponsored, until recently, the entire political career of the newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Kolomoisky is famous for violent attacks, using armed thugs and baseball bats, on companies he is taking over as a “raider,” and his criminal actions had warranted a travel ban to the United States as well as multiple investigations. His stomping ground was in Donetsk, in the Donbass, and Kolomoisky was a major funder and promoter of the Kiev-aligned troops deployed against the citizenry there. He was also the major funder of such neo-Nazi gangs as the Azov Battalion.

As documented by author Peter Schweizer in his book, Secret Empires, $1.8 billion in U.S. taxpayer loans—championed by Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry to stabilize Ukraine’s post-coup economy—went into Kolomoisky’s Privat Bank and simply disappeared. By 2016, Ukraine nationalized Privat Bank after discovery of a variety of insider-lending schemes. This tale is typical of U.S. taxpayer funds directed to Ukraine, where corruption remains absolutely rampant.

Based on documents released in Ukraine and the United States over the last days, the Hunter Biden and Devon Archer haul for providing PR legitimacy to Burisma is now estimated to run at somewhere near $3 million. But by 2017—as the result of the PR efforts for which Biden and Archer were the Washington faces, and the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor and Burisma investigator, Victor Shokin, for which Joe Biden claims credit—Burisma had been cleared, at least temporarily, of all criminal charges, and Kolomoisky’s travel ban had been lifted. Remember, as opposed to President Trump, Joe Biden bragged openly that he held up loans to Ukraine until Shokin was fired. And, fittingly, as of 2017, Burisma had formed a partnership with the Atlantic Council, featuring Burisma’s $250,000-a-year grant to that entity, to promote, among other things, “anti-corruption” activities in Ukraine!

CSIS

R. Hunter Biden, in 2013.

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The United States, 2016-2019

Now, let’s look at Ukraine’s intervention into the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Hillary Clinton. It is known that the following individuals are key players in the coup against the President: Christopher Steele, who authored the dirty MI6 dossier against Trump; Victoria Nuland, who supported Steele’s activities from the State Department; Dmitri Alperovitz, Chief Technical Officer of CrowdStrike, who fabricated the myth that the Russians hacked the DNC; Fusion GPS; the Atlantic Council; and the propaganda apparatus that attacks President Trump worldwide every day. They all played significant roles in the Ukraine coup. We will situate them as we tell the story of the Ukrainian intervention.

On January 11, 2017, Politico published an article, “Ukrainian Efforts to Sabotage Trump Backfire.” Politico’s investigation found that Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office, by accusing him of ties to Russia and Putin, and by implicating Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort in corruption. Politico made it clear that now the Ukrainians, led by President Poroshenko, were scrambling to undo the damage their intervention had caused, as President-elect Trump expressed outright hostility to them.

The Ukrainian efforts centered on Alexandra Chalupa, the DNC’s outreach coordinator to the virulently anti-Russia section of the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States. These people are primarily organized in the Central and Eastern European Congress and the Ukrainian Congressional Committee of America, and Chalupa has been their representative to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party for years. These organizations represent a bloc of some 22 million votes, and their main requirement for those they support is a violent hatred of Russia. Most on the Ukrainian side are outright Banderists.

Politico describes Chalupa as having a strong relationship with the U.S. Embassy in Kiev. Chalupa otherwise enjoyed a strong relationship with the Obama White House. Chalupa began opposition research centered on smearing Trump as a Russian agent, by her account, in December 2015. She told Politico that she developed, “a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials, and private intelligence operatives,” for her anti-Trump efforts.

Andrii Telizhenko, who worked in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, told the Gateway Pundit and others that he met Alexandra Chalupa in the spring of 2016. Chalupa told him she was working for the DNC and Hillary Clinton, “collecting any dirt or background information on Manafort, Trump, or any other campaign officials from the Trump Campaign, and was looking for connections to Russia, or the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), or the Russian mob, or Ukrainian mob, etc.,” in cooperation with Ukrainian intelligence officials. Telizhenko notes that Ukraine’s Washington Embassy was fully on board and assisting this project, and his claims have been fully supported by others. One goal Chalupa told him about was to use the opposition research to set up well-publicized hearings in Congress about Trump’s ties to Russia, through a Congresswoman she knew. These hearings were intended to dramatically influence the election.

Alexandra Chalupa

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On April 28, 2016, Chalupa and journalist Michael Isikoff attended a forum sponsored by the Open World Leadership Center, an entity sponsored by the U.S. Congress, which, conveniently, was attended by over 68 investigative journalists from Ukraine. Most had received funding from George Soros. According to a Chalupa email released by WikiLeaks, she was put on the program specifically to speak about Paul Manafort. In April, Fusion GPS had produced two phony dossiers on Manafort, both of them painting him nefariously as an outright Russian agent.

Skilled Ukrainian Intelligence Fabricators

Then in May, news suddenly surfaced in Ukraine of the existence of a hand-written so-called “black ledger” coming into possession of the Ukrainian National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). NABU was a major project of Biden and the Obama State Department working in coordination with the FBI.

It has been claimed that the “black ledger” provides documentation of $12.7 million in cash payments to Paul Manafort for his representation of Ukraine’s Party of the Regions and former President Victor Yanukovych, the man Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland deposed in their 2014 coup. When the “black ledger” was released by Ukrainian “anti-corruption activist” Serhiy Leshchenko, the New York Times published an article on August 14, 2016 detailing it. This was followed by an article by Isikoff on August 19, with Leshchenko as his source, claiming that Ukrainian anti-corruption prosecutors wanted to question Manafort. Then Leshchenko put a fine point on it in an August 28 interview with the Financial Times. According to Leshchenko:

A Trump presidency would change the pro-Ukrainian agenda in American foreign policy. For me it was important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he is a pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance of the world.

The Clinton Campaign immediately grabbed the work product they had paid for. Robby Mook, Clinton’s Campaign Manager, said in a statement that the Ukraine “black ledger” represents “more troubling connections between Donald Trump’s team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine.” He demanded that Trump “disclose Campaign Chair Paul Manafort’s and all other campaign employees’ and advisers’ ties to Russian or pro-Kremlin activities.”

Robby Mook was working off the provably fake dirty dossier of MI-6 agent Christopher Steele. In July of 2016, Steele claimed to the Clinton Campaign and the FBI that Paul Manafort was coordinating contacts between Russia and the Trump Campaign for purposes of defeating Hillary Clinton, using volunteer Carter Page as the conduit. He also claimed that Manafort and Putin had worked out a deal: Russia would leak the WikiLeaks documents (about Clinton and the DNC’s attempts to rig the Democratic Primary and Wall Street’s control of Hillary Clinton), in return for the Trump Campaign sidelining the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a campaign issue. Right in step, the New York Times and others claimed, falsely, that at the Republican Convention, Trump representatives had stripped out a platform plank calling for “lethal military aid to Ukraine.”

VOA

Paul Manafort

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In August, when Manafort resigned from the Trump Campaign, a Justice Department investigation had already been re-opened concerning Manafort’s activities in Ukraine, despite warnings from Ukrainian prosecutors and others to DOJ’s lead attorney, Andrew Weissmann, that the “black ledger” was a complete fake. It was. While it was used by Weissmann for various search warrants against Manafort, it was never introduced in his criminal trial for unrelated financial crimes.

The fake Steele dossier was used by the DOJ and FBI to procure 4 FISA warrants on Carter Page. Leaks concerning Page to the media ruined his business and his life, but he was never charged with anything. Steele met personally with Isikoff, and the DOJ and FBI used the subsequent article he wrote using Steele’s information as “corroboration” for the Page FISA warrant without ever telling the court that Isikoff’s article was dictated by Steele.

“Anti-corruption activist” Serhiy Leshchenko is a journalist who was also a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the United States’ regime-change operation. That is, Leshchenko, who played a key role in the 2014 Ukraine coup and its associated propaganda effort, is funded by the U.S. government through the NED. To support the neo-Nazi rampage on the streets of Kiev in 2014, Leshchenko secured video clips lauding the actions from the notorious mass murderer Zbigniew Brzezinski, as well as from David Kramer, then Executive Director at the CIA quango Freedom House, and Francis Fukuyama, who greeted the fall of the Soviet Union with the absurd idea that history had thereby ended.

Kramer, it will be remembered, was the conduit for leaking the very dirty dossier authored by MI-6’s Christopher Steele about Donald Trump, to Buzzfeed.

On December 11, 2018, a criminal court in Kiev ruled that Leshchenko and NABU Director Artem Sytnyk had “acted illegally” in intervening into the U.S. 2016 elections when they leaked the fake “black ledger” concerning Paul Manafort.

Congressional testimony has also revealed that Leshchenko was a major source for Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, including through Fusion researcher Nellie Ohr. In fact, suspicions run high that Christopher Steele’s dirty and fake dossier was not the product of Russian sources at all. It is just as likely that Steele’s fabrications are the product of historically very skilled Ukrainian intelligence fabricators, and that Steele was simply a salesman for lies invented elsewhere.

The Information Warriors

The LaRouche PAC website has already reported in depth—Part I, Part II, and Part III—on the anti-Russian information warfare apparatus which was birthed out of the Ukraine coup and includes Britain’s 77th Military Brigade (embedded in social media companies throughout the world), the Integrity Initiative, NATO’s Strategic Communications Center in Latvia, and the State Department’s Global Engagement Center.

All of these military-grade psychological and information warfare groups operated and continue to operate on behalf of the coup in Ukraine and have been critical in the “perception management” surrounding various false-flag atrocities attributed to Russia, such as the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-17 over Ukraine and the Sergei Skripal poisoning hoax. Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, the primary propagandists in the 2016-2017 operations against Trump, also operated in Ukraine, with Steele providing Victoria Nuland and John Kerry with frequent operational updates through many memoranda concerning developments in that country. In fact, the British Integrity Initiative’s documents, seized and published by the hacking group “Anonymous,” point to a propaganda initiative and censorship effort aimed squarely at Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, conducted, in part, right out of the State Department.

In describing this modern form of information warfare, Joel Harding, who went to work for Ukraine’s newly established “Information Ministry” during the coup, and formerly worked for Hillary Clinton at the State Department, describes a regime in which all information, other than manipulated propaganda, is denied to the target population. A compliant media apparatus publishes daily talking points about key events, over and over again. The talking points are aimed at the “psyche” of targeted populations, with high emotive content, designed to produce desired action. Dissenting views are to be censored or debunked as “conspiracy theories.”

Harding and the Atlantic Council put this into operation in the United States shortly after the election, when the Washington Post published the signal piece, “Propaganda or Not.” It listed every website in the United States that had been deemed to be insufficiently anti-Russian—most of which provided the only independent journalism in the United States—as requiring immediate censorship. No one can doubt that this is what has been at work since election day in the collaboration between the Obama intelligence community and the news media.

George Eliason, an American journalist who lives in the Donbass, has continually studied and detailed this apparatus as it worked in Ukraine. He has documented how Ukrainian-American Banderist groupings working with Alexandra Chalupa, her sister, Andrea Chalupa, and others, ran Digital Maidan, a critical element of the coup. The same groups crowd-sourced funding for the purchase of bullets to conduct the war in the Donbass.

WEF

Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and CTO of CrowdStrike, USA, in 2016.

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Eliason has also demonstrated that Dmitri Alperovitz maintained contact with the numerous Ukrainian hacking groups and individuals active during the coup and through the resulting civil war. Among other things, these hackers tracked dissenting journalists and others who were subsequently censored by killing them. Irene Chalupa, a longstanding Atlantic Council and State Department employee, also maintained contact with Ukrainian hackers. Alperovitz, sitting at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Research Lab, also was the CrowdStrike investigator who created the bogus narrative that Russia hacked the DNC in 2016 and provided the documents to WikiLeaks—the key claim in the entire Russiagate hoax against Trump. Eliason speculates, not without reason, that these Ukrainian hackers have played a major role in the coup against the President.

The Atlantic Council is known as the think-tank of NATO and is a primary British infiltration conduit into the United States. It is also the favored think-tank of the Banderist Ukrainian diaspora, which helps to fund it. It is hardly accidental that Burisma, its public image cleansed through the efforts of Joe and Hunter Biden, now contributes $250,000 a year to this outfit. Max Blumenthal has led the charge in exposing the nefarious activities of this Washington, D.C. operation, including the Burisma-Biden corruption story and other pay-for-play schemes.

Finally, a Word about Hunter Biden

It’s obvious that Joe Biden was advised—as Washington’s campaign consultants typically do advise—to get ahead of bad facts about his son by putting them all out there in a favorable forum. As a result, the damning details about Hunter Biden come from the campaign itself—rather than from any right-wing “conspiracist”—in the form of an article in the New Yorker, on July 1, 2019. The article reviews Hunter’s numerous battles with addiction, including cocaine and crack cocaine, his relationship with his dead brother’s wife, and his many business ventures, procured in his father’s footsteps and by trading on his father’s name. It otherwise confirms the corruption allegations developed at length in Peter Schweizer’s 2018 book, Secret Empires, allegations that did not suddenly appear in 2019.

It should also be clear that opportunistically exploiting Hunter’s sad story is a cheap shot. On the other hand, taking on the real story, the military-industrial complex, and its British imperial sponsors, which Donald Trump has done, the people who are now at war with this President, is the real battle, the battle that is absolutely necessary if our republic is to survive.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE WEBCAST

The Tables Have Turned on the Coup Plotters and Global Central Bankers

Left photo: U.S. Attorney’s Office/CT; right photo: USCGA

Left to right: John H. Durham, William Barr, James Clapper

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This is the edited transcript of the Schiller Institute’s New Paradigm Webcast of October 27, 2019. A video is available.

Harley Schlanger: Hello, I’m Harley Schlanger from the Schiller Institute. Welcome to our weekly webcast with our founder and President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Today is Oct. 27, 2019; we have a couple of extraordinary, breaking stories to start with, but let me just say that we will not have a video feed from Helga, due to a technical problem, but I assure you, Helga is there and has quite a bit to say.

So, we’re going to start with the two leading stories: One is the ongoing, accelerating meltdown of the financial system, which you’re not hearing about from the media. And the other is just as an extraordinary development, the move to a criminal inquiry for Attorney General William Barr and the Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham who now will have subpoena power and quite a bit more. Helga, why don’t we start with their criminal investigation, the shift to that, because this has quite extraordinary implications.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Wow! This is really the big turn in the United States we hoped and knew would come, but now it’s here: You’d never know if you just read and listen to the Western media in Europe, for example, because they are telling their readers that the final blow to President Trump has arrived in the form of testimony of State Department official William Taylor, Jr., but this is absolutely untrue, and the coup plotters are just completely on the defensive.

Now, as you mentioned, Attorney General Barr has now a full criminal investigation against such people as Clapper, Brennan, Steele, and naturally, this all brings up the question of what Obama knew and when did he know it, and this is already coming up. And Barr has now the full power of subpoena; this will lead to a grand jury and as things now look, there will be penalties and prosecutions for criminal behavior. So this is really incredible.

Criminal Investigation of Coup Plotters

There is a very interesting comment, for our readers who want to somehow grasp the significance of this, coming from Larry Johnson, one of the founding members of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, an organization of former intelligence officials, to which Ray McGovern and Bill Binney also belong. Johnson wrote a commentary in the blog of the military-strategic analyst Pat Lang called “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” for those who want to check it for themselves. In that commentary, he says it is absolutely not a coincidence that three events came together:

Office of Director of National Intelligence

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other national security aides present.

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First, is the announcement of the criminal investigation into the coup plotters (it didn’t say “coup plotters”), but in the various people who were involved in Russiagate against Trump and the coup in general; second, the fact that Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, announced practically at the same time, that his report on the fraud against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court will come out shortly. This very secret court oversees requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States. Obviously, they have been lied to many times by the various members of the Department of Justice and the FBI And third, that the government allowed Gen. Michael Flynn’s lawyer to fully expose the criminal conduct in the procedure against her client Flynn.

Now, this is also quite incredible, because what she already announced—her name is Sidney Powell—she says she has material showing that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in a letter dated January 10, 2017, , ordered the star writer of the Washington Post David Ignatius, a very notorious member of the Anglo-American deep state (if you want to call it that) to “take the kill shot on Flynn.” Two days later, Ignatius’ article appeared, which then was very instrumental in the prosecution and ousting of Gen. Flynn as Trump’s National Security Advisor.

And remember, Gen. Flynn was not just anybody; he was the person who had gone to Obama already in 2012, as then Defense Intelligence Agency Director, telling him that various U.S. official entities had backed al-Qaeda and ISIS and various other terrorist groups, and had warned the President of the terrible destabilizing effect this would have, all of which was completely dismissed by Obama.

If you want to know why the jihadis developed the way they did, and why ISIS took over and why the United States was working with some of the same forces which had been responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks, this was what Gen. Flynn was on top of and what he tried to fight against, and how it was that as National Security Adviser to President Trump, he got ousted through this operation.

So this is all coming out. And as I said, Larry Johnson who is a very senior analyst, basically says, that these three things—the criminal investigation, the Horowitz report, and the story around General Flynn—are all coming out together at the same time, is no coincidence, but it means a complete roll-back against this whole operation, and this is now really the big issue in the Russiagate and Trump question.

Schlanger: Helga, you mentioned former DNI Clapper. I just want to read a couple quotes from him delivered on CNN, saying he they were investigating Russian interference on the orders of President Obama. And he asked the rhetorical question, should he and the others have “blown off what Obama told them to do?” So, he’s now openly admitting that this came from Obama. This is quite a significant blow to this coup operation, isn’t it?

No Honor

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, what happens when such operations fail, the people who are conducting such coups and conspiracies, don’t have much honor among themselves but they are easily ready to throw each other under the bus. And in this case, Clapper is clearly pointing to Obama, and saying we did all of this only because we were ordered to do so. So, I think Obama will not be very happy about that, but here you go!

Schlanger: And concerning Ukraine and impeachment hoax, we’ve been covering this in full, that this is not just about Hunter Biden’s corruption; it has to do with the strategic slant. But that seems to be thinking of the people running this side of the coup, Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi, that they have Trump “dead to rights,” but that’s not true, is it?

Zepp-LaRouche: No, not at all. First of all, whatever this Taylor testified—first of all this was a Star Chamber testimony. In other words, the Democrats held hearings for two weeks which they did not allow the Republicans to participate in, so it was exactly what the British did in the American Revolution, which was one contributing factor for that Revolution to occur. It was so bad that at a certain point, some 20 or so Republican congressmen barged into this hearing and broke it up, essentially, which caused a big freak-out. But they said they would not tolerate this to go on.

William B. Taylor

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What Taylor is reported to have testified to on Oct. 22 was that Trump told Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky that he would withhold $400 million in U.S. military aide unless Zelensky personally announced that he would open an investigation into Biden’s role in 2016. And this was called by the media “the breakthrough” testimony which dooms the President and so forth.

But none of this is true: First of all, President Zelensky already publicly said that there was absolutely no such quid pro quo, in other words, that indeed Trump did ask him to investigate and assist Barr in his investigation of Biden’s role in 2016, but this was a formal request and there was no blackmail, there was no tying that to military aid or holding up such aid, so this was a lie already, and, this fake story was contradicted by the President of Ukraine!

So, then the Democrats accused Trump of abusing his Presidential powers by running a back-channel to Zelensky, including using Gordon Sondland, the new U.S. Ambassador to Kiev, Kurt Volker, the Special Envoy to Ukraine, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry; and that he would also have facilitated a channel for Giuliani to investigate the interference in Ukraine on behalf of Hillary Clinton in 2016; that Trump would have misused his powers by asking Zelensky to help Barr investigate all of this; and also that part of his crime was recalling Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch; and exposing Joe Biden’s role in the firing of the prosecutor of his son Hunter Biden, who was sitting on the Board of this firm Burisma. Burisma plays a very shady role in all of this.

A Constitutional Presidency

All of these things should be looked at exactly the opposite way: Trump was only carrying out the Constitutional right of all U.S. Presidents, namely conducting foreign policy with Presidents of other countries, so there was absolutely nothing wrong in that. But the story becomes more interesting when you look at all of the people involved against him.

Who, for example, is William Taylor?

What we are really looking at here is a large apparatus deployed by one can say the neo-cons, or the Democrat neo-cons—that is sometimes not a difference—which after the collapse of the Soviet Union broke all promises given to Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachov at the time, not to move NATO to the borders of Russia.

This same apparatus was involved in regime change, , in the Orange evolution against Ukraine, later in the Maidan, but also in similar color revolutions in other former Soviet Republics. So this is quite a story. For example, U.S. Ambassador Yovanovitch replaced the famous Geoffrey Pyatt, who was Ambassador to Kiev at the time of the Maidan coup. Remember the phone call of Geoffrey Pyatt with Victoria Nuland was leaked somehow, and they basically said we said we have to get our guy “Yats,” meaning Arseniy Yatsenyuk, in as Prime Minister. She also used the famous four-letter word against the EU that starts with F and ends with K. This is the apparatus.

And Taylor also has a career: He was in the diplomatic service in the State Department in the ’90s, when the economic shock therapy against Russia was applied. He was involved in various operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, at the time of the Ukraine color revolution.

This was the apparatus that was fully involved in trying to contain Russia by moving NATO to Russia’s borders, by trying to change the regimes in all countries which were not in favor of toppling Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is the apparatus that acted to prevent Trump from having better relations with Russia. Even as he was promising U.S. voters to bring about such better relations, as a candidate in 2016, this operation was already in full swing.

This is really the issue: The tables have turned. Look at all of these developments exactly from the opposite side. Now, you can understand why Russiagate took place, why now the new phase, what was supposed to become Ukrainegate, why all of that is part of the same British-instigated coup against Trump: because he wanted to improve relations between the United States and Russia.

kremlin.ru

President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych in 2012. The coup in 2014 against him brought in a government heavily infiltrated with Nazis of the Stepan Bandera tradition.

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The 2014 Nazis

Now, the tables have completely turned. The conspirators will be investigated, and I’m pretty sure that one thread will lead to another one, and the whole fabric of the story will be unraveled, including the background of the coup in 2014 against Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych, bringing in a government heavily infiltrated or mixed with Nazis of the Stepan Bandera tradition. So we’re looking really at a very, very dirty story which is now all coming out in the open.

Schlanger: I encourage our viewers to go to larouchepac.com, where on a daily basis, we’ve been writing stories about this, having videos on it, so you can get all the details that Helga just touched on.

Now, as all this is unfolding, Helga, we also have new reports on what you’ve been covering for the last months: the escalation of the financial crisis, the likelihood of an implosion sometime, not too far ahead. I think In a speech by Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England to the 2019 annual meeting in Washington of the IMF, he warned that the world economy is “sleepwalking” toward a new financial crisis. But why don’t you update us on what’s happening with the financial system?

Zepp-LaRouche: If you read the official financial media, there’s almost nothing about this. But we have absolute evidence. Investigate it yourself by going to the website of the Federal Reserve and look at the financing they’re doing. You’ll find out that since mid-September, they have significantly increased the so-called “repo” credits, that is, the overnight lending of the Fed to various banks. At a certain point it was $60 to 75 billion per day, and now the level is at $120 billion. And the volatility is still there.

CC/Gerda Arendt

Dirk Müller, in 2012.

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Behind the scenes, there are clear signs the insurance companies are in trouble, because they have extensions to derivatives. With growing U.S. corporate debt and the inability of the central banks to keep the interest rate down, it is an extremely volatile situation. Financial gurus like fund manager Dirk Müller, who is known as “Mr. DAX,” (from his days on the floor of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange) came out saying that we are facing a giant, new crash, and the difference with earlier situations is that all the regions of the world today are connected and therefore, we’re sitting in one big boat. He mentioned as additional factors that real industry is badly affected, because the German government, for example, is going against the auto industry; and the two major German banks, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, are in serious difficulties (to put it mildly); but I think there is an even more interesting dynamic at play.

We have warned that the neo-liberal system is not working. As a matter of fact, my late husband Lyndon LaRouche warned that this system is finished. In a famous video webcast on July 25, 2007, The End of the Post-FDR Era, he emphatically said, this system is finished and all we see is the different aspects of it coming to the surface.

Then, as people may remember, after the secondary mortgage market crisis in the United States in 2007, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in 2008, followed by the collapse of the global insurance firm AIG mid-September 2008. Then would have been the moment to make a complete, dramatic reform, and eliminate the causes for this systemic crisis. But as we now know, those who could have done so, didn’t There was a brief discussion about the need to have a New Bretton Woods—then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, for example said that under the shock of the situation. But then, later, at the G20 meeting in November 2008 in Washington, the fix was put in, and the most gigantic bail-out operation in history, ever—I think it altogether came to $23 trillion—was put into motion.

cc/Victor Bugge

Then President of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, administers the oath of office to Alberto Fernández, the Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers, in 2007.

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Bury Brutal Austerity

Now, things are different. All the tools of the central bankers have now been used up: quantitative easing, zero interest rates, even negative interest rates, money pumping to no end, now these lending overnight repo credits. It’s just the end of the system.

But their maneuvering was not confined to monetary bail-out operations, but was always combined with brutal, brutal IMF austerity. The European governments even put the “black zero,” the requirement that expenditures cannot exceed revenues, in their national constitutions.

As a result, a lot of the real (physical) economy has been destroyed! Living standards have been collapsed, and now, we are in a situation where the consequences of this policy is leading to anti-austerity mass strikes in practically every corner of the world. The financial policy is causing incredible social ferment.

Chile, for example. Chile was always peddled as the model of the neo-liberal economic system. We denounced that policy in two EIR articles in 1995, the first, “Privatized Pension System: the Apple of London’s Eye,” and the second, “Banking Crisis Explodes in Brazil.” It was a brutal, genocidal austerity program, and could not work. And now you have, in the last few days, 2 million people in the streets. In Santiago, more than 1.2 million people. The total population of Chile is only 18 million, so almost 20% of them were in the streets. Then you have Ecuador, Bolivia, Lebanon, Pakistan, Iraq, France, Germany, Ethiopia. Today, Argentina is holding an election, which will probably bring in as President Alberto Fernández, and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as Vice President, both of whom are completely at odds with the IMF.

So, I think what we are looking at is the beginning of the end of the neo-liberal system, and this is really big!

Schlanger: Wow! It is quite exciting, when you think about it. And it’s global, it’s something that cannot be stopped.

Syria

Now, at the same time, we heard howling from the neo-cons against Trump’s orders to pull U.S. military forces out of Syria, predicting horrible consequences. Actually, a horrible situation is turning into something quite the opposite. Presidents Putin and Erdŏgan met, and now there is stability on the Syria-Turkey border. How does this look to you, Helga?

Zepp-LaRouche: I think the situation has clearly shifted, with behind-the-scenes cooperation between Putin and Trump, which is clearly there, the announcement by Trump that he wants to pull out supposedly endless wars; the fact that Erdŏgan was in Sochi and clearly has an agreement with Putin, which includes the Adana agreement which was signed between Syria and Turkey 21 years ago, and allows for a certain amount of activity for what Turkey was doing; and the fact that there is now the idea to include the Damascus government in the negotiations which creates a viable basis to solve this problem.

Now, obviously, there are forces that are absolutely hysterical about that, and it isn’t so clear cut, because, for example, the Russian Defense Ministry accused the U.S. military of smuggling oil out of the oil fields in Syria, getting a monthly revenue out of that of $30 million. On October 25, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced that the U.S. would leave troops in eastern Syria to guard Kurdish-controlled oil fields from ISIS. But if you look at the statement by Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, the spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, that may be actually an effort by the military-industrial complex to prevent what Trump is announcing about troop pullouts.

Overall, the situation in Syria looks very good. A significant number of people in the West recognize that Trump has won, he has absolutely won, and that there is now the basis for reconstruction. So therefore, I think this late proposal by German Defense Minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK), to send the Bundeswehr into the northeast of Syria to protect a security zone, comes really late. Russia has already said it’s not needed. I think the Bundeswehr is already overstretched, so this is a really unnecessary and almost impotent proposal, with AKK trying to profile herself as the great strategist. But I don’t think this will fly.

The situation is evolving. There is a complete realignment going on. Turkey, still a member of NATO, insists that they have the right to do as much negotiations and dealings with Russia as they are doing with the United States, so the Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar insisted that it was basically the right of Turkey to discuss with Russia the sale of Su-35 fighter jets. And when Erdŏgan was in Sochi, Putin showed him also the Su-57 stealth fighters, and there’s discussion that Turkey will manufacture some its parts.

So I think this is all going in an interesting direction, and the West European countries, rather than opposing it, should participate in the reconstruction of Syria and of Iraq. The demonstrations in Iraq show that the living conditions for people have become intolerable! Afghanistan’s only chance to ever be transformed into a more modern country is if there is real economic development. The same is true for Yemen, a country bearing up under the worst humanitarian crisis for a long, long time. The Western countries should not continue to play the geopolitical games, but help in the reconstruction, and join hands with Russia, with China, with Iran, to rebuild this devastated region.

Wilson Center

Vice President Mike Pence.

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U.S. & China

Schlanger: Speaking of geopolitical games, we also have this pathetic speech from Vice President Mike Pence of October 24 at the Wilson Center in Washington, attacking China, which was responded to very strongly by the Chinese.

And it looks as though there’s some positive motion on finalizing Phase One of a trade deal between the United States and China. Please tell us something about that, Helga.

Zepp-LaRouche: Yeah, I think it could have been worse, but both the Chinese side and also the American side, said that they’re optimistic that Phase One is actually going to be concluded. But, you know, when you have such absolutely violent anti-China statements all the time, like those coming lately from Vice President Pence, who just repeated the entire litany of accusations against China, it really doesn’t help to create the kind of environment for cooperation between the two largest economies of the world, on which, really, much of the fate of the rest of the world depends.

So, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying answered Pence’s very hard—and also Pelosi, who had said something similar, saying they and their likes were distorting facts, blinded by prejudice. An op-ed in the October 26 issue of Global Times accused Pence’s speech of showing “arrogance, hypocrisy, bias and lies on China.” These are all stronger words than one is used to reading from the Chinese. So one can only say that all the attacks on China are really counterproductive, because what China has accomplished is an incredible economic miracle, overcoming poverty not only in China, but contributing to poverty alleviation around the world.

I think the anti-China attacks are really something of the past, and hopefully this opposition to Trump in the United States will now get investigated; that will also take some of the wind out of sails of these people.

Schlanger: Finally, we have a very delightful story coming from Sochi, the meeting that just took place between Vladimir Putin and the nations of Africa. You’ve been talking for some time about the importance of the Chinese role in developing Africa; now we see the Russians going in with big plans. How does this work out? What was it that Putin proposed? Obviously, he was well received by the Africans.

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, this was a big, big summit, the first Russia-Africa Summit. All 54 African nations sent delegations and 43 of those nations were represented by heads of state or government.

The scope of their deliberations was very far-reaching: joint work in security, the fight against terrorism, the fight against dope traffic, but also economic cooperation. Russia concluded Memorandums of Understanding with about a dozen or so African nations, according to which Russia will help them to build nuclear power plants; they otherwise agreed to engage in very broad trade and economic cooperation. It was really a very exciting thing. Almost two years ago at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, Putin offered that Russia will help to electrify, to turn on the lights, in all of Africa. The Russia-Africa Summit was a very big step in this direction.

Russia-Africa Summit

So now you have—besides China—Russia taking a leading role in the development of Africa. I think this is very important in the fight against terrorism. And also if Africa is to have nuclear energy, this is a very important step, so I’m very happy, because soon the African nations will have more nuclear power than Europe—Well, I’m not happy about that, but I think this is a good incentive, a kick in the behind of some of these greedy ideologues in Europe, that Europe will be sidelined completely and Africa will grow. For Africa this is very good; for Europe this is obviously very terrible.

But I think this is optimistic. For example Alexey Likhachov, the CEO of Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear energy corporation, reported that for every dollar which we invest in nuclear energy or in other forms of energy, two dollars will come out in return. For every half-megawatt of electricity we build, there will be 2,000 new jobs. And they also discussed many scholarships for students from a dozen countries in Russia. And all of this is very good, because Africa, which is a huge continent—it’s unbelievably big—and by 2050, it’s expected there will be 2.5 billion people, so the only way how that can become an economic powerhouse, which it must become, because otherwise you will have a refugee crisis of unbelievable dimensions, is to create hundreds of millions of new jobs for young people. So, Russia has taken a major step in that direction. And Putin also cancelled $20 billion in debt owed to the Soviet Union by African countries, on which not even the interest was being paid, in any case, so that is just cancelled.

So, I think this is really good. This is good news, and people should not freak out about geopolitical competition, because it would have been the privilege of European countries, or the United States for a long time to do likewise, but they didn’t, and now China and Russia are doing it, so they should join hands with these countries, rather than “by opposing end them.”

Schlanger: To conclude, Helga, you just presented a very impressive and sweeping picture of changes and of turning of the tables, as you said, against the coup plotters, the global bankers. What should listeners do to participate in this, to make sure it’s concluded successfully?

The Pukey Green New Deal

Zepp-LaRouche: I think they should help to get rid of the Green New Deal, because, if you think about it, this Green New Deal will blow out the financial system for good. It is the opposite of what some of these financiers and central bankers wish, that the green financing will lead financial streams into green technology and create a new boom, and postpone or avoid the crash. The opposite is going to happen. Already, Reuters has warned that the spread of strikes and protests around the world will blow out the system because it will force the governments to loosen up on the austerity, and this will make the investors very nervous, and that will trigger the crash.

These protests aren’t yet related to climate legislation—they are “just the result” of neo-liberal austerity. If the Europe proceeds with what von der Leyen, the President of the EU Commission, has announced that she will implement in the first 100 days that she is in office, that will force all industrial firms to go green in order to qualify for green financing, which the central banks, as Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, proposed at the Jackson Hole annual bankers meeting. He said that the banks must dictate to the governments that only such green financing should take place—if they go ahead with that, the social unrest will blow up the globe.

A Beautiful Future

This is completely untenable: So what you, our listeners and viewers should do, is join with the Schiller Institute. Contact us on our webpage. Get active with us. We are in a crash mobilization to implement the four laws of my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche: Glass-Steagall banking separation; then, we need national banks in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton; and a new credit system, a New Bretton Woods international agreement which allows for credit financing of large projects, like the New Silk Road projects around the globe. And then, international cooperation as a model for future cooperation among states in working together on a crash program for fusion, and international space cooperation. With these policies we can solve all of our economic-financial problems.

I think the key thing is, if you look at the news, and you see the mass protests in Chile, don’t think “this is very far away.” This is coming home very quickly, and we need the kinds of reforms I just mentioned, and then we can solve them. But we need people to get active, and not sit on the fence.

Schlanger: And I’ll emphasize it, even though you didn’t: It’s even coming home in Germany, now.

So, Helga, thank you very much and we’ll see you next week.

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes, I hope we see each other!

Buy 'Global Warming' Scare Is Population Reduction, Not Science

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Russia’s Historic Initiative In Sochi, the First Russia-Africa Summit

by Christine Bierre

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Russian President Vladimir Putin (foreground) and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, on Putin’s left, at the Russia-Africa Summit and Economic Forum in Sochi, Russia on October 23, 2019.

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Oct. 25—The Russian city of Sochi hosted the first ever Russia-Africa Summit and Economic Forum on October 23 and 24. Representatives of all 54 African countries attended this summit to discuss increasing cooperation with Russia in all fields—political, economic, security, cultural, and in particular, aid in setting up civilian nuclear power facilities (see the following article). Heads of state and government and other officials were present, along with representatives of the Russian, African and international business communities, and the public sector and cooperation organizations of the African continent. All in all, more than 3,000 participants attended the event.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt co-presided at the event with President Vladimir Putin. In a welcoming statement he noted that the African countries were ready for such cooperation, following their July decisions to ratify the creation of an African Continental Free Trade Area, and the launching of its operational phase at the extraordinary summit of the African Union (AU) in Niamey, Niger, on July 7. “This is one of the main objectives of the 2063 Agenda whose aim is to respond to the demands for more prosperity and dignity of the African population,” he stated.

Former president Obama, arrogantly, liked to depict Russia as a regional power. With his timely intervention into Syria, to stop the regime change against Assad and create the conditions for peace, and with this comeback to Africa to contribute to its development through nuclear power, President Putin has created the conditions for Russia to play once again the role of a world power.

The summit, Putin said,

is a starting point for building a fair partnership relation based on equality and mutual practical interest. . . . Our country has played a significant role in the liberation of the continent, supporting the struggle of its peoples against colonialism, racism and apartheid. . . . Later on, we helped the Africans to protect their independence and sovereignty, gain statehood, form the basis for national economies, and create capable armed forces . . . Soviet and subsequently Russian specialists built important infrastructure facilities, hydroelectric power plants, roads and industrial plants in Africa while thousands of Africans received a quality professional education at Russian universities. . . . This is well remembered by many current African leaders, who value our support. We too keep the memory of those pages of history.

Former “communist allies,” such as Ethiopia and Angola, were among the most important participants, but also more recent friends, such as the Central African Republic and some West African states. Many African leaders have been going to Moscow recently, reports Le Point in France: Mozambique’s president Filipe Nyusi, Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville, and João Lourenço of Angola, and others.

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Vladimir Putin addressing the plenary session on October 23.

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Russia to Double Trade with Africa

In his opening statements to the Summit, Putin went through the great effort that preceded it, indicative of Russia’s determination:

Multiple events on specific fields of Russian-African cooperation have been held over the past year. They include an economic conference and a meeting of the African Export-Import Bank’s Board of Directors in Moscow last June. [box: Putin: Russia Favors ‘Civilized Competition in Africa’]

The program of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum included a special session on advancing cooperation with the African continent. There have been many other themed exhibitions, seminars, Russian-African business mission exchanges, and in-depth and engaged discussions of prospective joint projects in trade, investment and industry-specific programs.

To reiterate, African countries are becoming increasingly attractive for Russian businesses. This is largely due to the fact that Africa is becoming a global economic growth centre. According to experts, Africa’s GDP will have reached $29 trillion by 2050.

Russia-Africa trade more than doubled over the past five years and exceeded, as our colleague just said, $20 billion. Is that a lot or a little? A colleague of ours said this is a good figure. I cannot agree with this. I think it is way too little. After all, ladies and gentlemen, keep in mind that Egypt accounts for $7.7 billion, or 40 percent, of these $20 billion. We have many potential partners in Africa, lots of them. They have good development prospects and enormous growth potential. Of course, this is not enough.

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The heads of delegations to the Summit. Vladimir Putin is in the front row center, with Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to his right and President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa on his left.

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Russian enemies in the west are deriding Putin’s efforts, spreading the idea that Russia is only capable of exporting weapons, which Putin rejects. Even though an in-depth exchange is planned on matters of coordination of anti-terror measures and the fight against trans-national criminal and other challenges and threats to regional and world security, Putin noted that the product range of trading is expanding, and the share of agricultural and industrial products is increasing relative to weapons:

Russia is among the top ten suppliers of food to the African market. We are now exporting more agricultural products than weapons to the markets of third countries. Weapons account for $15 billion of our exports, whereas agricultural products are nearing $25 billion in sales.

Integration processes unfolding in Africa provide additional opportunities for cooperation. We welcome the creation of the African Continental Free Trade Area as part of the African Union and are willing to work with this new entity.

We support establishing close working contacts between the AU Commission and the Eurasian Economic Commission, which will sign a memorandum of understanding tomorrow. As an active participant in the EAEU [Eurasian Economic Union], Russia will do its best to facilitate the convergence of trade regimes in the African Free Trade Area and the EAEU common market.

Notably, bilateral intergovernmental commissions and business councils established with many African countries are working energetically on the economic agenda of Russia-Africa ties, and Russia plans to expand its trade mission network, to support businesses and to establish new contacts.

The Coordinating Committee for Economic Cooperation with Sub-Saharan Africa, created under the auspices of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry . . . assists Russian entrepreneurs in accessing the African markets and helps businesses implement joint investment projects. . . .

Gazprom, Rosneft, and Lukoil are already implementing promising oil and gas projects on the continent. Alrosa is developing diamond deposits; Yandex is present in the markets of a number of countries, and helps African states address information security challenges and develop the digital economy. Rosatom is willing to build the nuclear industry for its African partners as a turnkey project and to build research centers based on multi-purpose reactors.

The construction of the Russian Industrial Zone in Egypt is nearing completion. This is a major site in the Suez Canal Economic Zone, where Russian companies will be able to localize their production facilities. About 20 Russian companies will participate in this project. This is the current estimation and I am quite certain there will be more of them.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat shake hands after signing a Memorandum of Understanding on Oct. 24 that outlines basic principles of relations and cooperation.

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Industrialization, Science Dominate Forum

Reports on the agreements reached during the Russia-Africa Economic Forum held on October 23 are beginning to come in. One thing is clear: The African nations are thinking big, and Russia is stepping up to support them. Some examples: the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) is considering establishing offices in a number of African countries, particularly in Ethiopia, South Africa, Egypt, and Uganda, RAS Vice President Yuri Balega told Tass.

Alexey Likhachev, head of Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear power corporation, told Tass that he had had the honor of participating in all the bilateral meetings President Putin held with African leaders on October 23—with at least eight countries, according to the Kremlin website—and in “all meetings the question was raised of advancing our cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear power.” Likhachev continued,

I can say that we have created a full-fledged regulatory basis with a third of African countries. About half of the African states are discussing, or have already concluded, concrete contracts and launched joint projects with us. As for the other countries, we are still in talks with them, hopefully with chances of success.

Nor does Russia have any intention of denying Africa the use of its fossil fuel deposits. The CEO of Lukoil, Vagit Alekperov, told reporters that “an array of agreements” for exploration cooperation, mostly offshore, were to be signed October 23. Requests from several countries for aid in developing downstream projects (e.g., refining) have been received, but he cautioned that those projects face more “challenging” considerations.

The topics of the numerous panels ranged from housing construction to securing economic and technological sovereignty, and included the possibilities for joint transport infrastructure projects, developing integrated processes and collaboration between the Eurasian Economic Union and Africa, possibilities for industry and energy cooperation, using minerals in Africa for the benefit of its people, healthcare—and much more.

The agenda set for the panel on “Russia and Africa: Science, Education and Innovation for Economic Development” characterizes the tenor of the entire forum:

The accelerated development of both Russia’s and Africa’s economic potential is inextricably linked to scientific output and the improvement of general education and training. The 21st century has heralded the rise of the knowledge economy. Scientific research and development result in new products and industries, and are able to make a vital contribution to tackling current social and economic challenges facing our countries. . . . What can Russia offer today in terms of developing science and education in Africa, particularly as part of the African Union’s Agenda 2063? What new opportunities does cooperation in science and education with countries of the African continent present to Russia?

More than 500 Deals Signed

At the end of the Summit, according to Russian presidential adviser Anton Kobyakov, “the number of signed agreements, memorandums, and contracts is more than 500; the overall worth of only those that we know about at this moment is more than 800 billion rubles. This is a little more than $12 billion. But the meetings continue,” Sputnik reported.

Earlier, Russia announced it is writing off more than $20 billion in debt that African countries accumulated during the Soviet era. “It was not only an act of generosity, but also a manifestation of pragmatism, because many of the African states were not able to pay interest on these loans,” Putin told Tass on the eve of the summit.

While Russia’s relationship to Africa cannot be reduced to security matters, this is an important aspect of the partnership. Africa suffers badly from the spread of weapons and terrorism caused by the Obama-Sarkozy criminal military expedition against Gaddafi’s Libya. Now Russia is said to have the intention to use its particular expertise in this matter to help the continent fight against the evil of Boko Haram. Russia is Africa’s largest arms supplier, and Putin noted that its military cooperation extends presently to more than 30 African nations, and Russia could expand its training programs to military and security personnel. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, agreed to renew a lapsed military cooperation agreement with Moscow while at the same time establishing a joint venture between Nigeria’s public oil company and Russia’s Lukoil for deep offshore prospecting.

In his concluding statements, Putin expressed joy and hailed the Summit as “historic”: “This event really opened a new page in relations between Russia and the States of the African Continent,” he said. A sentiment shared by his African partners. South African International Relations Minister Naledi Pandor told the South African Daily Maverick:

We’re very clear; our big message is that we’re ready for investment; we’re ready for partnership. We want partnerships that are real, that will support us in advancing the objectives we have set for ourselves. I think the summit fits in with our president’s and our country’s objectives in the three or four key areas: first is our objective in greater economic growth and job creation; the second would be investing in sectors such as the marine economy, advancing innovation and technology development.

Perhaps as many as a hundred South African companies had registered for the Russia-Africa Economic Forum.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa commented, “What stands Russia in good stead in the eyes of many African countries is that Russia was never a colonial power.”

Putin: Russia Favors ‘Civilized Competition in Africa’

In an interview with the Russian News Agency TASS on October 20, ahead of the Russia-Africa Summit and Economic Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin, drew a picture of Russia’s trade and development policy with respect to Africa. The interview, headlined, “Putin: Russia Ready To Compete for Cooperation with Africa,” is posted on the websites of the Kremlin and Tass.

In that interview, Putin laid down clearly the kind of cooperation Russia wants to have with Africa, in contrast to that of the Western imperialists, saying:

We are not going to participate in a new “repartition” of the continent’s wealth; rather, we are ready to engage in competition for cooperation with Africa, provided that this competition is civilized and develops in compliance with the law. We have a lot to offer to our African friends. This will be discussed, among other things, at the forthcoming summit.

We see a number of Western states resorting to pressure, intimidation, and blackmail against governments of sovereign African countries. They hope it will help them win back their lost influence and dominant positions in former colonies and seek—this time in a “new wrapper”—to reap excess profits and exploit the continent’s resources without any regard for its population, environmental or other risks. They are also hampering the establishment of closer relations between Russia and Africa—apparently, so that nobody would interfere with their plans.

According to Putin,

Interest in developing the relations with African countries is currently visible not only on the part of Western Europe, the United States, and the People’s Republic of China, but also on the part of India, Turkey, the Gulf states, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Israel, and Brazil. [back to text]

Russia Offers Africa ‘Atoms for Peace’

Oct. 25—On October 23, the Russia-Africa Economic Forum in Sochi hosted a special panel discussion on the “Contribution of Nuclear Technologies in the Development of Africa,” with the participation of Director General of Rosatom, Alexey Likhachev.

This was one of the key topics of the forum’s business program. Likhachev discussed the capabilities of nuclear technologies, and their potential roles in the development of the continent, with other session participants, including the IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the its Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications, Najat Mokhtar; the head of the Zambia Atomic Energy Agency, Roland Msiska; the Minister of Infrastructure of the Republic of Rwanda, Claver Gatete; the Minister of Innovation and Technology of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Getahun Mekuria Kuma; and other representatives of relevant ministries and corporations.

The stark reality is that Africa is in dire need of energy: 48 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa together produce as much energy as a single European country—Spain. That means that every other African has no access to electricity. According to the Global Energy Architecture Performance Index Report for 2017, only five African countries have 100% electrification, all of them in North Africa: Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Morocco. South Africa follows immediately after at 85%. Then come Ghana, 64%; Senegal, 57%; Ivory Coast, 56; and Nigeria, 56%. According to World Bank reports, access to electricity is 20% in Burkina Faso, 16% in Niger, 14% in the Central African Republic, and 9% in Chad.

Rosatom has been active in Africa for some time, wrote Vanand Meliksetian, an adviser to the Netherlands on energy, in a May 15 article published by OilPrice.com:

Recently, Moscow has set its eyes on Africa where most states have either already struck a deal with the Kremlin or are considering one. . . . The Russian deal is particularly appealing to countries lacking nuclear know-how due to Moscow’s comprehensive offer regarding financing, construction, and operation of the facilities. Currently, Rosatom is experimenting with a contract known as “build-own-operate,” under which ownership of the plant remains in Russian hands while energy is sold to the host country. This new type of contract is appealing to several African states who lack the means to finance construction. In some instances, the mineral resources of host countries could function as a deposit for any liability comparable to Moscow’s “arms-for-platinum” deal with Zimbabwe worth $3 billion.

On October 15, in anticipation of the Sochi summit, Likhachev had said,

The creation and development of the nuclear industry on the African continent will not only solve the problem of the energy crisis, but also change the standard of living, providing full access to public health services, and increasing the level of education and food security. We see a great interest on the part of African countries in creating new ties for further technological development. Moreover, we are ready to discuss all possible options for cooperation on the continent. I am sure that Russian-African nuclear projects will have a great future

The forum in Sochi was prepared for by a conference in Nairobi, Kenya one week before, featuring officials of Rosatom and more than 150 energy and nuclear professionals. Representatives were present from African countries that are already implementing programs for developing nuclear technologies, such as Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Rwanda, Zambia, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Ghana, or are planning to do so, such as Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Niger, Tanzania, and Tunisia. Also present, of course, was South Africa, which already has Africa’s only two functioning nuclear power reactors, but has only this month confirmed that it will now build small, modular reactors as its nuclear next generation.

Speaking in Nairobi, Dmitry Shornikov, CEO of Rosatom Central and Southern Africa, emphasized the advantages of joining the atomic club through creating nuclear industries in new countries, and gave an overview of projects with the maximum positive effect on industrial development, enhancing the quality of life, and developing the “knowledge economy.”

He said:

We are the only ones in the world who are fully vertically integrated in absolutely every segment of the nuclear value chain. We utilize this competitive advantage to create additional value by providing full support for the national nuclear energy program of the customer country at all its stages and provide access to the entire line of products and services throughout the entire life of a nuclear power plant from a single supplier.

At this point, aside from Russia, only two countries are in a position to contribute to Africa’s energy development—China and France. France’s crisis in its own nuclear sector, in the wake of incompetent decisions by recent governments and continuing pressure by Europe’s Malthusian green financial lobby, rules it out, unless it goes through a real change.

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Presidents al-Sisi (left) and Putin, in their opening remarks to the Summit, emphasized the acceleration of industrial and nuclear power projects.

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Russia, Egypt to Accelerate Industrial and Nuclear Projects

In their opening greetings, both co-chairmen of the Sochi summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Egypt’s President Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, emphasized the importance of moving forward on the “ambitious” nuclear and industrial zone projects the two countries are working on. Putin reported to el-Sisi that, when visiting the United Arab Emirates last week, he had briefed officials on these Russian-Egyptian plans, and they “became extremely interested in our joint project and will also think of how to become involved in our joint industrial development plans.”

El-Sisi pressed for these projects to be moved forward quickly, with the same “get it done now” approach he had applied with such success in the Suez Canal expansion. Egypt wants to accelerate the process of setting up the Russian Industrial Zone in the Suez Canal Economic Zone by “resolving all outstanding problems, so that Russian companies and enterprises come to Egypt, register and start working there.” Likewise for the nuclear power plant, Egypt “strongly hope[s] that all topics related to this project will be settled without delay, so that we can start implementing the project in accordance with the signed contract.”

El-Sisi then invited Putin to visit Egypt again for the ground-breaking ceremony of the nuclear power project and the signing of the contract for the Russian Industrial Zone.

El-Sisi took the occasion to thank Putin for holding this first Russian-African Summit. He referenced Russia’s long history of good relations with the whole continent, starting with its support for the African liberation movement. Russia has proved a “reliable partner,” he said, and—

We hope very much that Russia will be working in Africa in all spheres and fields, including in that of the development, as well as in the financing, of infrastructure projects on the continent, and in particular in energy and road construction.

THE NEW PARADIGM ADVANCES

Kenyan Standard Gauge Rail Successful

in Looking Beyond the Here and Now

by Mark Bender

Oct. 25—Proponents of the New Paradigm in Africa have a new milestone to celebrate, with the opening of a new segment of the Mombasa-Kisumu Standard Gauge Rail (SGR) line in Kenya. On October 16, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta led a celebration to open Segment 2A, a 120 kilometer (75 mile) extension from the capital (and current terminus) of Nairobi, to Naivasha, a large town northwest of the capital. Opening of this—admittedly rather short—segment nonetheless brings the SGR project one step closer to its planned destination: Kampala, the capital city of neighboring, landlocked Uganda.

Stunning Progress

Kenya’s SGR project, the most advanced in Subsaharan Africa, began in 2014, when the country began construction of a modern, standard gauge (1.435 meter) rail line from the port of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean, northwest to the nation’s capital of Nairobi, a distance of 450 km (275 mi). Opened in 2017, on Madaraka Day—Kenyan Independence Day, when the people took political control of their destiny from the British Empire on June 1, 1963—the rail line has been a huge success, cutting transport and delivery time significantly for both goods and people. Exceeding expectations, the railway transported two million passengers within its first 17 months; and in 2018, its first full year of operation, carried over 5 million tons of freight.

The Mombasa-Nairobi line was initiated in 2009 discussion between the China Road and Bridge Corporation and the Kenyan government, as reported by P.D. Lawson in the April 27, 2018 EIR. China’s Exim Bank extended credit for 90% of the project. By May 2016, initial track laying was completed in just over 1 year. Passenger service was opened May 31, 2017, eighteen months ahead of schedule. Freight services commenced in January 2018. Plans are now underway to electrify the segment from Mombasa to Nairobi, which will greatly lower operating costs.

Benefits of the new, faster technology now extend far beyond mere transport, where the railway has taken hundreds of trucks (and buses) off the notoriously congested highways, making them safer and more useable for the population.

With the increased capacity and speed of freight transport, Kenya’s exports to the East African Community (including neighboring states Uganda, Tanzania and South Sudan) have hit a three-year high in the first eight months of 2019. Not only have government earnings from domestically produced goods increased 6% compared to 2018, but Kenya’s domestic consumption of electricity—certainly not a nation known for its overconsumption of this resource—has increased 3.2% in the first 8 months of 2019.

President’s homepage

Uhuru Kenyatta, President of the Republic of Kenya.

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President Kenyatta has launched additional infrastructure projects, building on the Kenya Vision 2030 plan. In addition to the opening of SGR Section 2A on October 16, he has announced plans for construction of an inland container depot (ICD) at Naivasha (to store or transfer goods from rail to truck, or from SGR to the old meter gauge rail, MGR); a new 23 km expressway in Nairobi; and a water project in rural Kimuku (stemming from a natural spring accidentally discovered during construction of the rail line!). He wants to create a Special Economic Zone—to include the port of Mombasa—to further speed up freight delivery.

British Environmental Fakery

While the Kenyans have rightfully been celebrating, not everyone is happy. Imperial resistance has been present almost from Day One—in Kenya using the environmental flank to discourage economic development, adding unnecessary expenses supposedly to preserve nature and “habitat,” at the expense of technological innovation.

Three months after Segment 1A opened, for example, in September 2017, a London NGO was created: Delphically named Development Corridors Partnership (DCP), with the UK, China, Kenya and Tanzania as its only members. The DCP is funded by the UK Research Council’s Global Challenges Resource Fund (GCRF), an NGO with $1.5 billion in its very deep pockets. The GCRF was established in 2015 in the wake of the announcement of the global Belt and Road Initiative by China’s Xi Jinping in 2013.

The DCP has been very low-key in its operations—GCRF’s website says it is “monitored by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).” Ultimately, it is the DCP that was responsible for such design oddities as the 6 km elevated section running through the Nairobi National Park, a feature unnecessary from an engineering standpoint. In order to accommodate wildlife “migration patterns” (specifically those of giraffes) the entire railroad bed was hoisted about 10 meters above the ground, requiring the construction of 198 huge concrete pillars. In another segment, sound barriers were installed, so as not to interrupt the sleep rhythms of the animals. The next time anyone raises the issue of “cost” for the SGR, ask him or her how much the 198 piers cost.

Then there are the little things. Segment 2A’s opening was supposed to be on Madaraka Day (as was Segment 1 on June 1, 2017), but it was delayed because of a (possibly contrived) legal skirmish over compensation fees by landowners. Just enough to quench the anti-colonial momentum. Segment 2A is not fully complete because of technical issues at the final Naivasha station (all passengers get dumped at the currently isolated Suswa station, 20 km short of destination), and there is uncertainty involving freight transfer from SGR to MGR trains.

Uncertainty contributed to Uganda’s decision to put its upgrade to SGR on hold. Meanwhile, Uganda is rebuilding its 100-year-old MGR line. But it is preserving the SGR right of way by demarcating the planned path from the Kenyan border to Kampala.

The best news is that Uganda had, as of October 2, already re-submitted a loan application to the Exim Bank of China through the Ministry of Finance to get funding for the construction of the SGR.

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Russian President Putin (left) with Kenyan President Kenyatta at the Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi, Russia on October 24, 2019.

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New Paradigm Is Hope for the Future

Addressing all these concerns at the Oct. 16 launching ceremony, President Kenyatta raised the element of hope, and the need for all to cast their eyes past the here and now, speaking partly in English and partly in Swahili. As quoted in the October 16 issue of the Kenya Star, he said:

I have seen some media reports saying that the President is launching a railway going to nowhere. But I said it is ok. Because you have no vision . . . you stay in Nairobi . . . you walk to your bar in the evening . . . you wake up and look for a matatu [minibus] because you are going to where you know.

But your reasoning cannot tell you to think of how the Kenya of tomorrow . . . the Kenya of our children will be. . . .

Let me tell you. Mai Mahiu . . . Suswa is not nowhere. This is Kenya. And let me tell you. Whether you like it or not, once I am done with my work and go home, after 20 years when I come back here, Mai Mahiu and Suswa will be more developed than Nairobi. . . .

And I tell all those who are thinking of holding us back, that they should relocate to other countries because there is no place for them in Kenya. We will not be discouraged by baseless claims. We know where we want to take the country in development and we will not allow visionless people to discourage us.

In words his listeners could understand, President Kenyatta likened today’s SGR critics to colonial-era British Members of Parliament who in 1894 argued against the construction of the original Kenya-Uganda railway, claiming it was a “Lunatic Express” that led “nowhere,” and thus a waste of money:

We are not only focusing on today. We are looking at 50 years from now. We want to come to Suswa in future not only for politics but to see industries. We want to see our youth working, living well, and educating their children.

Buy The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge

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III. Where Are the Leaders?

October 20, 2002

THE TRUE STATESMAN

The Historical Individual

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Editor’s Note: This is a reprint from EIR, Vol. 29, No. 42, Nov. 1, 2002, pages 22-31. It was originally released by the LaRouche in 2004 Presidential campaign committee on Oct. 20, 2002.

In a time of crisis, like today’s, the typically failed political leader is like the narcissistic actor who poses for his audience, from on stage, or on camera, while gloating, sotto voce, “Look at me!” He is more or less indifferent to the reality of the circumstances under which he postures; the objective of his performance, is, like that of a prostitute prowling the tawdry street, merely seduction.

In contrast to such pathetic creatures as that, the great Classical actor thinks and acts as one from the ancient Classical Greek stage, revealing the character he plays, by speaking from his place of concealment from behind a mask. As Shakespeare’s character Chorus warned the audience, at the onset of King Henry V, see what you hear performed on today’s stage, not by looking at the images on the poor stage of that theater, but upon the nobler, supernal stage of your imagination.

Shakespeare’s Chorus gave the audience a knowing look, which forewarned them, silently, that when the play had ended, they would be astonished to be returned from the grandeur of the imagination, to see, then, where Chorus had stood, those actors who are not the roles which they had just played. So, in life, as on the Classical stage, so does the truly great statesman do, as Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt did, and so did the historical, sublime Jeanne d’Arc or Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. When such real-life actors as these appeared no more on the transient stage, the soul of such exceptional leaders lived on, unseen, immortal, more powerful in death than in life before.

The Classical artist, as actor, or composer, is a copy of such exceptionally great political leaders as those. He or she is a model, who teaches the people and their proper leaders the art of imparting to the imagination of an audience, what the poet Shelley identified as profound and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature. It is by this same standard required for the exceptional political leader, that the performance of that artist, as an artist, is to be judged.

I explain.

During each tragic moment of great crisis, every nation, every culture is gripped by the need for a sudden and profound change in its quality of leadership. Its survival then depends upon its willingness to choose a new quality of leadership which is typified by those extraordinarily exceptional individuals who stood, in retrospect like immortal souls, apart from, and above mere popular taste of their time. Throughout all the future history of mankind, as during the past, this presence, or absence of the determining role of the exceptional individual will always be, as it has always been, one of those milestones which mark those pathways of choice, toward either serenity or self-destruction, choices which close in on every culture at its moments of such great, self-inflicted peril as we face today.

In the following pages, I shall show, that, as in great Classical tragedies portrayed on stage, in such times as this present moment, a moment of imperilled European civilization as a whole, the nation whose people abhor the exceptional individual in favor of popular opinion, is already doomed to be brought down: brought down, like foolish Romans drunk from their cheering for the popular mass entertainments of the Colosseum then, or foolish audiences at today’s football stadium, rock concert, or video orgy, a people doomed by its own habituated, popular, inherently tragic misbelief in comfort and pleasure.

In the course of future history, the only likely improvement over that record of the rare contribution by the exceptional personality, will never be more than, hopefully, a greater number of such exceptional individuals than what is the unfortunately rare individual active in our imperilled nation today. The greatest peril of any crisis-wracked nation, such as our own, is a proliferation of moral mediocrities, or worse, mediocrities occupying the leading places where intellectual and moral giants are needed. Such is the choice provided now, between the opportunity, or doom awaiting the U.S.A., in particular, at the present moment of global crisis.

Benjamin Franklin. “When such real-life actors as these appeared no more on the transient stage,” writes LaRouche, “the soul of such exceptional leaders lived on, unseen, immortal, more powerful in death than in life before.”

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So, over the thousands of years of that European history sprung, as the child of Egypt, from ancient Greece, the role of the exceptional individual, has been the subject-matter of those great legends, tragic histories, and dialogues, which reflect the record of mental life of entire cultures from our past. The great Classical historians, such as Aeschylus, Plato, Shakespeare, Lessing, and Schiller, have set the real-life choice between what are named the tragic and the sublime on stage. Now, it is, once again, the turn of our nation, and you, the people who live within it, which waits to be judged by future audiences, when your tale, in turn, is relived upon that same Classical stage.

Our nation has a choice; you must choose your leaders accordingly. Tragedy, or triumph: which shall it be? There is nothing magical in that choice. The choice can be a clear and rational one, if you are willing, unlike the failed Denmark of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, to see it so.

I explain.

Where Does True Imagination Dwell?

Properly spoken, names for what Schiller defined as the sublime, like spirituality, immortality, the imagination, and truth, refer to ennobling experiences which occur only among human beings, never to lower forms of life. The human individual is awarded a natural power to know these higher conditions of experience, if he, or she uses it.

Unfortunately, so far in history, few of us have ever actually come to develop our innate power to know the reality to which those specifically human qualities refer. Most entrap their sense of personal identity within the prison of an ivory-tower delusion, such as the goldfish-bowl-like mental prison of the empiricist or Cartesian, who knows actually nothing of the real world, knowing only the images on that screen where the delusions called sense-certainty are displayed, and felt. In times of great crisis, society will be saved only if leadership is given to those relatively few free souls among us, to certain from among those “ugly ducklings” whom fools call “eccentrics.”

EIRNS/Stuart Lewis

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. with civil rights heroine Amelia Boynton Robinson. The survival of a nation in crisis “depends upon its willingness to choose a new quality of leadership which is typified by those extraordinarily exceptional individuals who stood, in retrospect like immortal souls, apart from, and above mere popular taste of their time.”

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The indispensable leaders for such times, are those who have succeeded, from early in childhood, in letting ourselves be taken over by that natural potential for the sublime. Those who have kept good faith with that potential, born within each of us, are, therefore, the only qualified leaders of nations for such times. They are, therefore, exceptional.

Within the ancient to present span of today’s globally extended European civilization, one name, that of Plato, is best known for understanding this distinction of the exceptional, Socratic figure in society. For this reason, Plato’s dialogues are sometimes identified as spiritual exercises. All discoveries of what are experimentally validated as universal physical principles, such as Johannes Kepler’s uniquely original discovery of universal gravitation, were produced as the fruit of that method of hypothesis expressed by the Platonic dialogue.

The relevance of this for defining the exceptional individual, is elementary. Plato supplies many examples.

The human sensory experiences are an expression of the working relationship of the sense organs to a central nervous system. What we learn through our sense-experience, is the power to recognize a certain effect of the universe’s actions upon those sense-organs. What we perceive in this way, is not reality, but the mere shadow of the effect of actions by the real, unseen universe, chiefly from outside our skins, on the sense-organs embedded within our living biological organism. Therefore, in his Republic, Plato compares sense-experience to shadows cast on the walls of a dimly firelit cave. So, the Apostle Paul writes to the same effect in I Corinthians 13.

However, the human mind has an experimentally provable power which is superior to mere biology, a quality called the power of reason, a higher power which is unique to the members of our species. This power is also known as the power of hypothesizing. Through this power, we are equipped to discover what can be recognized by societies as universal physical principles, hypotheses whose validity can be demonstrated by those same, suitable forms of experiment displayed in the span of Kepler’s New Astronomy.[fn_1] Such principles could never be seen by the senses, just as our unaided senses could never perceive the interior of an atomic nucleus; but, once we have proven the principle, we are able to apply that principle to make provable, efficient changes in the real, but unseen world outside our sense-perceptual powers.

In modern times, ingenious use of scientific progress enables us, more and more, to compensate for even the nearly full impairment of faculties of seeing, hearing, touch and so on. The famous case of Helen Keller illustrates the principle involved: the loss of sensory faculties does not lessen the innate power of the human mind to know the universe even by artificial substitutes for sensory organs. It is with the mind’s spiritual power of hypothesis, not sense-certainty, that man knows the universe.

EIRNS/Stuart Lewis

Jeanne d’Arc, whose sublime quality of leadership made possible the founding of the French nation-state.

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This view of the efficiency of the experimentally grounded power of hypothesis, defines a real universe, a higher universe, beyond the shadowy illusions of a shadow-world of sense-perception. As for the case of Helen Keller’s remarkable education, this real world is fairly described as the universe of the scientific imagination. It is the world of that scientific truthfulness which should always be the scientist’s working approximation of truth. It is persons whose minds dwell consciously in that real world of truth, beyond illusory sense-certainty, which are the exceptional ones whom we may recognize as the great true Classical scientists in the tradition of Plato, such as Leonardo, Kepler, Leibniz, and Gauss, the great Classical artists such as Bach and Beethoven, and the great leaders for the perilous times of great crisis.

In the legacy of the Biblical Moses, this power of reason, this power of hypothesis, which is otherwise knowable as the quality of spirituality, defines man and woman equally as made in the image of a personality known as the Creator of the universe, and as given powers and responsibilities akin to His.

Before we come to politics, I must explain the significance for this for physical science, as follows.

The Lesson of the Noösphere

Vladimir I. Vernadsky, like Mendeleyev, one of the exceptional scientific geniuses of modern Russia, was the first to present adequate definitions of what he named, respectively, the Biosphere and Noösphere.

He combined his own work in the field known as biogeochemistry, with the discoveries of Louis Pasteur and Pasteur’s successors, to define a universal principle of life more sharply, as a universal class of physical principle, one distinct from the physical chemist’s experimental definition of non-living processes. He defined that experimentally exhibited, increasing influence over the non-living processes of our planet, as presenting us with a Biosphere.

Using the same experimental method, Vernadsky demonstrated that the principle of discovery of universal physical principles, which occurs only within the mind of the human individual, exerts a power to change the Biosphere itself, as it were from the outside. Since these powers of the human create principled effects not otherwise existent, such powers are not only physically efficient; they are universal physical principles. Since these principles exist efficiently, but outside the bounds of sense-certainty, they are a quality of physically efficient, spiritual powers, specific to the human mind, and efficient in their power over what is thought of as the material universe. This defined the Noösphere.

In broader terms of reference, Vernadsky’s conception of the Noösphere was not an entirely new conception of the way in which the universe is organized. For example, I had adopted a similar conception of the general, categorical organization of our universe during late adolescence, that as a product of my personal defense of Leibniz’s Monadology against Kant’s Critiques. Vernadsky’s notion of a Biosphere had been a legacy of a Classical Greek conception of a hylozoic universality, a notion also inherent in the work of Plato. Plato’s dialogues, notably the Timaeus, define that hylozoic universe as bounded by a still higher, physically efficient, spiritual power, one corresponding to human reason; that already implied what Vernadsky named the Noösphere. The crucial difference is, that Vernadsky’s thorough development of the experimental notion of biogeochemistry to the point of defining a Biosphere experimentally, provided the empirical-scientific basis for also defining a Noösphere in a similar way.

These spiritual powers expressed as hypothesizing, are the Classical domain of the true, the efficient imagination which acts, through our intention, to change the universe which we inhabit.

These discoveries presented Vernadsky with two additional challenges which he was not able to solve within any of the relevant known writings produced by the close of his life. First, since discoveries of principle are generated only within the sovereign bounds of an individual human mind’s cognitive (hypothesis-generating) processes: by what principles are such ideas transmitted among the individuals within society, and from one society to another, as in a Classical-humanist mode of education? Second, if such cognition is an efficient mode of physical action on the universe, what is the corresponding, Gauss-Riemannian physical geometry of that universe, that it permits the efficiency of such creative action by human cognitive powers to change the universe?

I have presented the essential principles which point to the answers to those two questions, in other published locations. The exceptional individual suited to serve as a leader for time of crisis, differs from the usual political figure in a specific, and usually fundamental way.

I explain.

Why Leadership Is Indispensable

Although what is called a classroom Euclidean geometry, is less false than a customary classroom arithmetic, it conditions the misled mind of the student to accept a falsified, science-illiterate’s notion of the world of space, time, and matter. A Euclidean geometry is an attempt to explain the phenomena of sense-certainty in a way which is consistent with the way in which the poorly developed mind foolishly mistakes sense-certainty for physical reality.

Nonetheless, the geometry of Euclid’s Elements contains, in part, useful reports of certain stubborn internal contradictions, reports which we have received from ancient Classical Greeks of the tradition from Archytas and Plato to Eratosthenes and Archimedes. These contradictions, which include the implications of constructing a doubling of the square, and the cube, and the physical implications of what are called the Five Platonic Solids, lead toward modern discoveries in a physical geometry existing outside the bounds of either a childish counting-number arithmetic, or a Euclidean or like sort of ivory-tower (a priori) geometry.

A modern appreciation of this work from Classical Greece’s history, is identified, typically, by five principal categories of discoveries by modern European science: a.) Kepler’s discovery of universal gravitation; b.) Fermat’s discovery of a principle of quickest time, as opposed to shortest distance; c.) the combined effect of the work of Huyghens, Leibniz, and Jean Bernoulli, as expressed in Leibniz’s uniquely original discovery of the calculus and the associated “quickest time” principle of the true infinitesimal and the elementary catenary form of universal least-action; d.) Gauss’s first, 1799 report of his uniquely original discovery of the fundamental theorem of algebra; and, e.) Riemann’s continuation of Gauss’s 1799 announcement in his 1854 definition of the universal principles of a physical geometry. These five, sampled sets of discoveries point to the basis for my own original discoveries in a branch of science founded by Leibniz, the science of physical economy.

The application of the science of physical economy, so situated, to the notion of the Noösphere, provides us a sense of the kind of anti-Euclidean geometry[fn_2] which we must employ, for a modern understanding of that real universe which exists beyond naive sense-certainty.

EIRNS/Stuart Lewis

Hamlet plays at killing King Claudius, while taking no action to save the disintegrating kingdom. Hamlet’s folly was that he, like his fellow Danes, adhered to the cultural custom of the time, dooming not only himself, but the kingdom along with him.

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That corrected, Riemannian view of a Noösphere, provides us a conceptual framework, within which to examine the differences between the actual behavior of a society, and notions consistent with a Riemannian form of Noösphere. This approach enables us to conceptualize the problem posed by the pathological effects of some among the implicitly axiomatic assumptions of currently prevalent popular opinion. Those pathological effects, we then treat as the characteristic, systemic pathologies of that culture. This approach to assessment of political-economic systems, has been the source of my unmatched success in published, long-range economic forecasting during the recent thirty-five years.

Although the potentially fatal systemic disorders of currently prevalent U.S. popular and other leading opinion, are not limited to the increasing, axiomatic follies of current, post-1964 U.S. economic policy of practice, all of the important such axiomatic disorders, economic or other, may be, and must be correlated with the specifically political-economic follies.

To provide the reader a fair view of the relationship of the exceptional leading individual to today’s U.S. existential crisis, focus upon the 1964-2002 process of unfolding transformation of the U.S.A. from its earlier characteristic as the world’s leading producer society, to its 1964-2002 progressive decadence as a “post-industrial” consumer society, a society in imitation of such respectively ancient and medieval models of imperial maritime powers as Rome and Venice.

The potentially fatal systemic conditions of social-political systems, such as that of the 1964-2002 U.S.A. today, are expressed by fundamental errors of assumption which underlie the way in which a society stumbles, more or less unwittingly, into making its choices of action, and inaction. Sooner or later, the continued toleration of such flawed sets of implied axiomatic assumptions, brings the conflict between society and nature to a condition approaching an existential crisis. It must then, like the U.S.A. today, alter its implied set of axioms, or collapse. This is the condition of crisis from which only the society’s acceptance of the leadership of an exceptional individual can rescue that nation. So, Hamlet’s foolish adherence to his Denmark’s ruling custom doomed the Denmark of that tragedy, as Wallenstein’s failure to defy his oath for the sake of natural law, his failure to overturn the Habsburg order, condemned Europe to more than a dozen horrible years of a continued religious war.[fn_3]

Hamlet’s folly was that, in the end, as he confesses in the Third Act soliloquy, he, like his Denmark of that time, adhered to that custom by which it destroyed itself. So, as Shakespeare’s Horatio warns, even as dead Hamlet is carried from the stage of the same continuing, habituated cultural folly, he doomed not only himself, but the kingdom whose customary folly he had followed into death.

So, in a later time, the German generals replayed the folly of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Schiller’s Marquis de Posa or Wallenstein, in betraying Hitler’s adversary, Chancellor von Schleicher, in the events of January 28-30, 1933, and, again, in the events of Summer 1934. For this, the institution of those generals paid dearly in July 1944, as the foolish Kaiser Wilhelm and his nation had played the fool, in backing the foolish Habsburg Kaiser, in Summer 1914. In these, and many, many cases in actual history, the ugliest tragedies are more often the fateful outcome of adhering to a flawed tradition, than violating it in that timely way consistent with that higher authority which is the same natural law invoked by the United States on July 4, 1776.

For the uses of modern science, including economic analysis, Gauss’s 1799 report of his fundamental theorem of algebra, founds a modern mathematical form of anti-Euclidean geometry, by a devastating attack on the empiricist follies of D’Alembert, Euler, and Lagrange. That latter trio had dedicated their careers to defending, as Descartes had done, a pro-empiricist reading of the first nine books of Euclid’s Elements, by sundry, fraudulent denials of the real existence of what they foolishly and fanatically deprecated as “imaginary numbers.” Gauss successfully addressed the same problem which those leading empiricist mathematicians refused, axiomatically, to comprehend, the so-called “Cardan” paradox.

Gauss recognized what ancient Greek scientists, including Archytas, Plato, and Eratosthenes, had defined as that physical principle of construction, the which is expressed by solutions for paradoxes such as the construction of a doubling of the square, and of the cube, and the Platonic solids. Gauss recognized the same notion of physical powers cited by Plato for the case of the doubling of the square. Gauss showed this again, thus situating, in algebra, what Leibniz and Bernouilli had shown in their treatment of the catenary’s reflection of a principle of universal least action, and also in their showing of the related significance of natural logarithms. These mathematical paradoxes reflected the natural, physical geometry of what Gauss defined as the complex domain, outside the unnatural, “ivory tower” mathematics of the celebrated mathematicians Euler and Lagrange.[fn_4]

Gauss’s work provides the basis for a general understanding of formal mathematics from the standpoint of experimental physical science, rather than an “ivory tower” (a priori) approach to so-called “pure” mathematics. This approach is necessary for a successful scientific treatment of any measurable physical feature of a modern political-economy. This conceptual approach permits the development of reasonable measurements of growth or collapse of the physical economy of a nation, or group of nations. This conceptual approach requires emphasis on study of medium- to long-term cycles in creation and depletion of physical capital improvements over the medium to long term. As I have demonstrated repeatedly, by my uniquely consistent success in long-range economic forecasting over recent decades to date, that view of capital cycles, is indispensable for defining the systemic characteristics of modern economy over the medium- to long-term span. [box: Gauss and the Theory of the Complex Domain]

So it is, that scientific progress depends upon the application of experimentally validated discoveries of universal physical principle, discoveries which never occur except as the work of an individual discoverer’s sovereign powers for hypothesizing. So, the same quality of creative powers of the exceptional individual within society, provides the corrective changes in ways of thinking, the quality of exceptional leadership on which the survival of a self-imperilled nation or culture repeatedly depends.

I explain.

The Politics of the Complex Domain

The complex domain, as defined by the pioneering work of, chiefly, Gauss and Riemann, presents us with a physical geometry of real powers, a real universe, counterposed to the mere shadow-world of naive sense-certainty. What is “imaginary” is the Euclidean, or quasi-Euclidean form of “ivory tower” geometry, which sees only shadows of a real, physical geometry, not the physical substance which the shadows reflect. Nonetheless, in any competent understanding of the origins and cure of systemic crises, such as the world’s self-inflicted, presently onrushing monetary-financial collapse, the cause of that calamity is the false assumptions which are implicitly valued, socially, politically, to possess the authority of axioms, that function approximately as if they were real axioms of an actual universe. Therein, in such intermingling of combined valid and false, popular assumptions, lies the cause for those qualities of systemic crises which sometimes bring about the extinction of once-powerful empires such as those of Biblical Belshazzar’s Babylon and Rome.

A critical study of the pathological features of a Euclidean geometry helps the student’s development of insight into the relevant characteristics of systems premised on an assumed a priori set of deductive definitions, axioms, and postulates, such as those of a Euclidean deductive (“logical”) system of theorems and corollaries. Study of the falsehoods inhering in any such deductive system, is key for understanding the pathologically systemic states of general belief responsible for self-inflicted cyclical-systemic crises, such as that rather immediately threatening the early disintegration of the U.S.A. today.

The principal cause for the doom of any culture, is that mental disorder typical of popular opinion, which is to assume the validity of any assumptions currently adopted by a learned profession, or religious teaching, or more crudely adopted as “generally accepted popular opinion.” So, as a foolish class in geometry always returns, directly, or indirectly, to the assumed authority of some set of unquestionable definitions, axioms, and postulates, a foolish people seeks the comforting authority of those same false, axiomatic delusions which, if continued long enough, will send that society plunging into self-inflicted ruin.

The Romantic tradition of vox populi, which was the underlying mechanism of ancient Italy’s self-inflicted doom, is an example of this form of mental illness on a mass scale. The pathological system of Immanuel Kant, which Kant crafted as argument against the existence of knowable truth, should be referenced because it exposes the pathological type of mental mechanisms by which a pathological state of tradition may bring even a once-powerful culture to ruin. For this purpose, I refer to the defense of irrationalism, under the rubric of “the negation of the negation,” which Kant features, under the sectional topic of “The Dialectic of Practical Reason,” in his Critique of Practical Reason.

Kant, who, throughout his writings, rejects the existence of truth as a matter of principle, argues that the victim’s acceptance of society’s repression (“negation”) of impulses to which it objects (as “negative”), produces a “positive” impulse consistent with the society’s imposed “morality.” This generation of a positivist ethical impulse, by “negation of the negation,” serves as Kant’s proposed alternative to truth.[fn_5] In the writings of the follower of the positivist fanatic, Ernst Mach, Dr. Sigmund Freud, we meet the same doctrine of “repression,” but expressed in a muddier, and also smuttier form than in Kant’s original. Kant is, unfortunately, correct in describing the widespread apparent effect upon the people of defective cultures. Kant’s substitution of such pathologically induced lack of belief in truthfulness, is that pervasive moral corruption of national cultures which fosters such a society’s cyclical-like descent into systemic, potentially fatal crises of national and broader cultures.

On this account, the exceptional political leader who rescues his people from the precipice of self-inflicted cultural collapse, performs a function which expresses the same characteristics as the discovery of an experimentally validated universal physical principle. Rather than arguing for remedies within the bounds of the generally accepted culture which threatens to destroy that nation, the valid leader for a time of such crisis, does exactly what Shakespeare’s self-doomed Hamlet refused to do:

. . . Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that dread of something after death,—

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns,—puzzles the will,

And, makes us rather bear those ills we have,

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus, conscience does make cowards of us all;

And, thus, the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;

And, enterprises of great pith and moment,

With this regard, their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

The adequate leader for a moment at the brink of systemic crisis, like the scientific discoverer at a critical juncture in his work, must lead the nation away from its suicidal instinct, to adopt sweeping changes in the axiomatic assumptions on which that society has been operating up to that point. The would-be, “practical” leader, who seeks approval from the authority of prevalent popular opinion before acting, is, like Hamlet, a menace to his nation. The needed leader, is an exceptional individual. No other will do, if the nation is to escape its imminent peril.

How To Make a Leader

An adequate prospective leader for such a time of systemic crisis as today’s, must have devoted much of his, or her personal mental and moral development from childhood and adolescence on, to studying, and despising what prove to have been the systemic falsehoods which have become more or less generally accepted by peers, and also preceding and later generations. This impassioned awareness of widely accepted, implicitly axiomatic systemic falsehoods of assumption, as embedded in the customary practice of his, or her society, promotes in that young and maturing mind a disposition for emphasis on subject-matters pertaining to what Shelley identified as “profound and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature.” This has been the conscious characteristic of my personal life, experience, and development, since childhood. For this reason, I am much quicker than most persons, to recognize relevant qualities, or lack of such qualities, in others, both living acquaintances and historical figures.

If the insights of such a developing, relatively exceptional personality are well grounded, he, or she acquires what sometimes amazed spectators see, in him, as the “gift of prophecy.” For as long as I can recall with certainty, since early adolescence, I have enjoyed the possession of such an apparent gift. Over the course of the recent forty-odd years, I have never been mistaken in my judgment concerning the direction and approximate tempo of developments pertaining to the long-range unfolding of the economic and related social processes. Consequently, on those long-ranging issues of policy on which I have premised my U.S. Presidential candidacy, since 1975-76, I have never been mistaken, as the published record of those actual forecasts attests.

Hence, my foresight of February 1983, that were the Soviet leadership to reject the policy I had recommended that President Reagan present, the Soviet economic system would collapse “in about five years.”

Now, all of the axiomatic-like policy-assumptions of my supposed rivals among leading political figures and economists, have failed, utterly. Most among them are still clinging hysterically to failed policies, policies which express a bankrupt way of thinking about the processes of policy-shaping as such. However, do not permit yourself to be so occupied with the particular errors of their opinion and practice, as to overlook the root of their compulsion to commit the same, or more desperate errors of the same systemic type today. Look at the systemic roots of their crisis; look at the “geometry” of their mental life, a geometry which they do not know to exist, but which, nonetheless controls their mind as if it had “preprogrammed their thoughts.”

Therefore, I have presently two principal missions. First, to get you safely through the worst of the presently onrushing world and national crisis, and, second, to foster a new leadership, from among the ranks of our young people, which will understand the systemic features of history, and, therefore, were much less likely to make mistakes as foolish as most members of the recent two adult generations have made until now.

[fn_1]. This power of reason is otherwise named natural law, as opposed to a merely positive law. Kepler’s process of uniquely original discovery of a universal physical principle of gravitation, as presented autobiographically in his The New Astronomy, is an example of the process of natural law. Leibniz’s uniquely original discovery of a universal physical principle of least action, and Gauss’s 1799 announcement of his uniquely original discovery of the fundamental theorem of algebra, are also examples. [back to text for fn_1]

[fn_2]. To the best of my information so far, the concept of an “anti-Euclidean,” rather than “non-Euclidean” geometry was introduced by one of Gauss’s two principal teachers, Abraham Kästner. In fact, Gauss’s discovery of a mathematical form of anti-Euclidean geometry, is reflected in his 1799 publication of his original discovery of the fundamental theorem of geometry. The discoveries of Lobachevsky and Janos Bolyai, are rightly distinguished from Gauss’s and Riemann’s anti-Euclidean geometries as “non-Euclidean” geometries, which amend, rather than overthrow Euclidean geometry. [back to text for fn_2]

[fn_3]. Friedrich’s Schiller’s account in his Wallenstein trilogy, makes that same point, as does his earlier treatment of the essentials of actual history, in his Don Carlos. [back to text for fn_3]

[fn_4]. The following matter is of such relevance for the topic being developed here, that the following notes are implicitly required. Gauss’s pioneering in the anti-Euclidean geometry of his teacher Kästner, dates from 1792, and plays a crucial part in the work leading to the 1799 publication of the discovery of the fundamental theorem of algebra. Unfortunately, the tyrant Napoleon Bonaparte’s designation of Lagrange as Napoleon’s favorite, occurred shortly after the 1799 publication of Gauss’s first paper on the complex domain. The British appointment (e.g., by the Duke of Wellington) of London’s asset, the despicable French Restoration monarchy, continued the published, fraudulent attack on Gauss of the then-deceased Lagrange; this anti-Gauss policy was continued under the predominant control of the hoaxsters Laplace and Cauchy. On the continent of Europe generally, as in Hannover, conditions did not improve until the 1840s. Gauss himself did not reference the anti-Euclidean implications of his 1799 paper, until qualified references, confidentially, to Janos Bolyai’s work (1832) in his correspondence with Wolfgang Bolyai, and, quasi-publicly, in later correspondence on the matter with C. L. Gerling (e.g., 1844) and H. C. Schumacher (e.g., 1846). Thus, in Gauss’s later reports on the fundamental theorem, Gauss was prevented, politically, from referencing his 1799 attacks on Euler’s and Lagrange’s follies. The truth of the anti-Euclidean implications of the 1799 announcement was first brought clearly to the surface by the 1854 Habilitationschrift of Gauss’s protégé Bernhard Riemann, Über die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen. Riemann there traced the premises on which his own definition of an anti-Euclidean (not non-Euclidean) physical geometry rested, as to the relevant Gauss work on biquadratic residues, and Gauss’s work on the general principles of physical-space-time curvature. The paradigmatic metric of the complex domain, as defined by Gauss-Riemann, is the catenary-keyed notion of a universal principle of a quickest pathway of physical least-action, as had been developed jointly by Leibniz and Jean Bernouilli. [back to text for fn_4]

[fn_5]. Kant’s referenced argument takes its included origins within earlier, medieval European history from such sources, as the doctrine of the “elect” associated with the neo-Manichean, Cathar cult whose influence infected the regions centered upon the axes of the Garonne and Rhône. That Cathar tradition was exploited syncretically by Venice’s Paolo Sarpi in launching the cult of empiricism, of Francis Bacon, Galileo, Thomas Hobbes, et al. In the later “Enlightenment” phase of empiricism, that of John Locke, Bernard Mandeville, François Quesnay, Hume, Adam Smith, and the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, the neo-Manichean irrationalism of the Cathars assumed such forms as the doctrine of “the Invisible Hand.” [back to text for fn_5]

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Gauss and the Theory of the Complex Domain

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) founded a modern mathematical form of anti-Euclidean geometry, providing the basis for understanding formal mathematics from the standpoint of experimental physical science. The illustrations published here are taken from the pedagogical series on Gauss’s work, produced by Bruce Director (See EIR, April 12, May 3, and Aug. 30, 2002).

Gauss built upon the prior discoveries of Plato, Archytas, and Leibniz, some of which are shown here. [back to text]

Gauss’s Fundamental Theorem of Algebra is based on a generalized conception of physical powers cited by Plato in the Meno and Theatetus dialogues. There Plato makes the distinction between the “power” of a magnitude that produces a line and a magnitude that produces the square. The magnitude that doubles a square is the diagonal of the original square, which, as the Pythagoreans discovered, is incommensurable with the side. The harmonic relationship of a series of doubling squares was called by the Pythagoreans, “geometric.” Each square was the geometric mean between its successor and predecessor.

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To double a cube requires a magnitude of a still higher power, which was determined to be the equivalent of finding two geometric means between two extremes. Archytas developed a construction to find such a magnitude. His solution depended on a characteristic possessed by the curve formed by the intersection of the cylinder and torus. This curve could not be drawn on a plane, because it curved in two directions. Gauss would later define this characteristic as “negative” curvature.

The longer magnitude is AC, which is the diameter of a circle, while the shorter magnitude AB is a chord. That circle is rotated around A to form a torus. A cylinder is then produced perpendicular to the torus, whose diameter is also AC. AB is extended until it intersects line AD which is tangent to the circle at C. Triangle ACE is rotated around AC to form a cone. All three surfaces intersect at point P. [back to text]

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Leibniz’s investigation of the catenary (Figure 3)—the curve formed by a hanging chain—led directly into the work of Gauss on curved surfaces. The catenary is formed as the arithmetic mean between two curves which Leibniz called “logarithmic,” and are today called exponential. In the figure, the lines are spaced equally along a horizontal axis. The “logarithmic” curve is formed by the vertical lengths which are in geometric proportion. OO=1, e'=OO^2 and e=

1/OO^2; d'=OO^3 and d=OO^3, etc. The catenary is formed by adding length e to e' and dividing the combined length by two; then adding length d to d' and dividing the combined length by two, etc. The points of the catenary are equal to (OOn + 1/OOn)/2. [back to text]

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In Gauss’s 1799 doctoral dissertation on the fundamental theorem of algebra, he investigated Plato’s conception of “powers,” generating complex surfaces such as those shown here: a Gaussian surface for the second power (left) and the third power. [back to text]

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Buy The Economics of the Noösphere

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AMERICA AWAKENS IN A TIME OF CRISIS

William Livingston, Alexander McDougall and the Committees of Correspondence

by Robert Ingraham

Portrait by Joseph Siffred Duplessis, 1785

Benjamin Franklin

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Oct. 28—There exists a pervasive view among those who have studied the American Revolution, that prior to 1775-1776, very few among the American colonists sought independence from Great Britain. They had grievances, assuredly, yet the overwhelming majority were loath to break the link to the mother country. There is certainly a great deal of empirical evidence to support that view, including copies of letters, speeches and other utterances from some who are remembered today as the founding fathers of the nation. It is asserted that only the intransigence of George III and the wild incompetence of Lord North, Charles Townshend and other British leaders drove the desperate colonists to the steps they ultimately took, and this only at a very late date—a “last ditch” resistance to tyranny, so to speak.

But is this really true? Or was there another process, another dynamic, underlying and catalyzing events? Did the colonists revolt simply against acts of oppression—as the saying goes, “No Taxation without Representation”—or was there a higher principled motivation which guided the actions of the leaders and a majority of the participants in that struggle? The answer to that question is of great significance in determining the quality of the fight which we must wage today. At the same time, a careful examination of the ideas and morality which motived the leaders of that era will pose a challenge to each of us to rise to that same standard.

The 1620 Plymouth Colony and the 1630 settlement of Boston had established communities which were already semi-independent. Legally they were bound to Britain, but those pioneers had fled to the New World precisely to escape the chains of oligarchical rule which existed in Europe, and they were pledged to create a new type of society, governed by the principle of the equality and nobility of the human individual. This is explicit in both the Mayflower Compact and John Winthrop’s A Model of Christian Charity. From the very unfolding of the colonization of North America, there existed a determination to create a society that was self-governing and guided by the agapic principle of “doing good.” This beacon—of the intrinsic value of every human individual; of the promise of a new culture within which all participants might be free from the chains of oligarchical rule and liberated to both advance their own conditions and contribute to the betterment of society as a whole—is the vis viva of the American Republic.

In this report we shall be discussing certain individuals—great individuals who have been written out of most history books—who played a determining role in the creation of America. These include, most emphatically, William Livingston and Alexander McDougall. We shall also examine specific topics, including the Committees of Correspondence and the Sons of Liberty. This report is not intended, however, as simply a recitation of events.

The first, most relevant, question to ask is, “Why did people do what they did?” What spurred them to act, and what inner moral force guided their actions?

A second related question, and one which is seldom thought through in a rigorous way, is:—How did the American Revolution happen? What transpired and what quality of leadership was demonstrated between 1750 and 1776 which produced the result of the Declaration of Independence?

The answers to those questions are not to be found in the oligarchical nostrum of “pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain.” Rather, what must be grasped is that, from the earliest days of the colonization of America, right through to 1776, an ongoing process of discussion as to the nature and intention of civil society shaped the thinking and actions of many in the colonies. “What is it to be a Human Being?”—and “How must society be organized such that it is coherent with Human Potential?” These questions defined the serious deliberation which took place in the pre-Revolutionary years.

The primary location in which the events of this article take place is New York City. This is not purely arbitrary. New York was the key battleground. In the mid-18th century there were three geo-political headquarters of the British Empire in North America: Halifax, Nova Scotia; New York City; and Kingston, Jamaica. The Royal Governors of these Provinces were the primary representatives of the monarchy in North America. The elements of the British Navy deployed to the Americas were based in these three ports, as were regiments of the British Army; and New York City was the headquarters for General Thomas Gage, who commanded the British military forces for all of the 13 colonies. The American Anglican Church, which functioned as a religious and cultural enforcer of oligarchical rule, was also based in New York. This dominant position of a British Crown faction in New York created a situation where the events of 1763-1783 took on the character of a bitter civil war, considerably different from what occurred in the other colonies.

At the same time, it is out of the revolutionary leadership in New York, that the core figures of the 1789 Washington Administration would emerge, as well as the faction later allied with Alexander Hamilton in his economic and financial initiatives. All of the magnificent accomplishments which emerged later had been prepared ahead of time, through years of a principled fight, a fight which had at its core the question of the nature of Man and the purpose of human society.

March 1753 issue of The Independent Reflector.

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I. William Livingston and

the ‘Triumvirate’

On Nov. 30, 1752 a new publication appeared in New York City. The Independent Reflector was the brainchild of three men: William Livingston, John Morin Scott and William Smith, Jr., all lawyers and all members of the First Presbyterian Church.[fn_1] During the 1750s and ‘60s the political influence of these three was so significant that they were dubbed “The Triumvirate” by their opponents. Appearing weekly, the Reflector was the only serialized non-newspaper publication in the thirteen colonies. It was published for exactly one year—52 issues—before it was suppressed, with massive legal and financial pressure brought to bear on the printer by the Province’s Assembly and the Anglican Church.

Livingston (1723-1790) was of a generation between Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, nine years older than the latter and seventeen years younger than the former. Livingston’s chosen place of worship, the First Presbyterian Church on Wall Street, was known throughout New York as the “Patriot Church.” Although the origin of the Sons of Liberty is usually dated to 1763 or 1764, the seed-crystal for the Sons began at First Presbyterian a decade earlier. This is testified to by the loyalist Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden who later branded Livingston and his allies as “hornets of rebellion” and stated that the Sons of Liberty emanated from the First Presbyterian Church in the mid-1750s. It was a trustee of that church, Alexander McDougall, who, in 1763, organized the first official chapter of the Sons of Liberty in the 13 colonies. On January 14, 1776, while George Washington’s Army besieged Boston, the church’s pastor, Rev. John Rogers delivered a sermon, calling on the members of his congregation to “Let a spirit of patriotism fire your breath.”

Center photo: From a 1777 drawing by John Trumbull

The “Triumvirate”: William Smith, Jr. (left), John Morin Scott (center), and William Livingston (right).

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The work of the Livingston-Scott-Smith Triumvirate is correctly viewed as a continuation of the decades-long initiatives of Benjamin Franklin. In 1748 this trio formed the “Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge,” and the similarity of that group to Franklin’s Philosophical Society—founded only five years prior—should be noted. By the mid-1750s, at the time of the Independent Reflector, Franklin was the most famous and influential individual in America. His scientific experiments, his political initiatives and his “good works” in Philadelphia are all evidence of his intention to develop a non-oligarchical culture in the New World, one which nurtured both the well-being and the productive potential within the population.

It is precisely this same optimism as to the nature of the human condition, this same belief in a Free Citizenry and this same emphasis on human beneficence which characterizes the writings and initiatives of William Livingston.

The New York Society Library Building in 1893.

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During the 1750s Livingston, Scott and Smith pursued many useful projects, including the founding of New York’s first medical society, the founding of the Moot, an organization dedicated to legal reform (to which John Jay and Gouverneur Morris later belonged) and the creation of the New York Society Library, the city’s first subscription library. But at the heart of all of this was not merely a desire for civic reform, but an uncompromising rejection of the mores and prescriptions of oligarchical rule. In 1752, with the appearance of the Independent Reflector, Livingston, Scott and Smith declared war. The challenge posed by the Reflector to the residents of New York—to throw off subservience, not only to British diktats but to the axioms of oligarchical thinking and culture—created a political firestorm. By the time it ceased publication, ten percent of adult New Yorkers were subscribing to the Reflector, and given the fact that scarce printed materials were passed from hand to hand, a much larger percentage were readers. It circulated also outside of New York. Ben Franklin was a subscriber, as was John Adams.

The Reflector dealt with many varied matters, including essays devoted to civic improvement, on subjects such as road repair, fighting fires, prisons and jails, meat inspection, education, monetary and credit policy, and legal reform. The most extraordinary feature of the Reflector, however, was in the issuance of what can only be called moral or philosophical essays, almost all written by Livingston. Some were of a political nature—on the right of resistance, free speech, freedom of the press, taxation and representative government. Many of these were reprinted in other colonial newspapers. None of these essays, however, presented simple or pragmatic arguments. Always they approach their subjects from an unshakeable and bold assertion of the irrevocable rights of free citizens, grounded in the creative essence of the human identity.

Other essays went even further, exploring the nature of Man in society, his proper role, and the consequences of individual actions. There is an optimism which radiates from the pages in reading these essays, even now more than 250 years after they were penned. The intention is to draw out and encourage that which is best in each human being. On the one hand, Livingston is explicit on the responsibility of government to act on behalf of the General Welfare, but for him this can not possibly work without a desire within the breast of each person to act both for his or her own advancement and for the greater good. In essence, what is at work is a reflexive and a reflective minimum/maximum principle, where the moral incentive which motivates the individual is the same as that which governs society and culture, and the two reinforce each other, toward the improvement of both.

For the purpose of grasping the quality of intervention that took place, selected excerpts from these essays are printed verbatim in the next section.

II. The Reflector Speaks

In an essay titled “The Author’s Vindication of himself” (Independent Reflector, Feb. 8, 1753), Livingston draws a line in the sand between himself and his opponents:

The Reflector is determined to proceed unaw’d, and alike fearless of the humble Scoundrel and the eminent Villain. The Cause he is engaged in, is a glorious Cause. ‘Tis the Cause of Truth and Liberty. What he intends to oppose, is Superstition, Bigotry, Priestcraft, Tyranny, Servitude, public Mismanagement, and Dishonesty in office. The Things he proposes to teach, are the Nature and Excellency of our Constitution.—The inestimable Value of Liberty:—The disastrous Effects of Bigotry, and the Shame and Horror of Bondage.

In “Of Party Divisions” (Feb. 22, 1753), Livingston reflects on the qualities needed within the people to effect positive change:

From the Moment that Men give themselves wholly up to a Party, they abandon their Reason, and are led Captive by their Passions. The Cause they espouse, presents such bewitching Charms, as dazzle the Judgement; and the Side they oppose, such imaginary Deformity, that no Opposition appears too violent; nor any Arts to blacken and ruin it, incapable of a specious Varnish. They follow their Leaders with an implicit Faith, and, like a Company of Dragoons, obey the Word of Command without Hesitation. Tho’ perhaps they originally embark’d in the Cause with a view to the public Welfare, the calm Deliberations of Reason are imperceptibly fermented into Passion; and their Zeal for the common Good, gradually extinguished by the predominating Fervor of Faction.

In “On the Origin, Nature, Use and Abuse of Civil Government” (July 12, 1753), Livingston writes:

If we consider those different Springs from which good or bad Actions flow; the different Principles, Prejudices, Passions and Interests, that variously influence every civil Event, it will appear undeniably evident, that the Force of Example can never teach a Ruler the Methods of just Administration. He must carry his Inquiries much higher, view Government in its first Rise, trace Communities back to their Original, and acquaint himself with the formal Reasons of Society. Such Investigations as these, will convince him, that Communities were formed not for the Advantage of one Man, but for the Good of the whole Body: That Government was instituted, not to give the Ruler a Power of reigning despotically over the Subject, but to preserve and promote the true Interest and Happiness of both.

In “Further Reflections on the Doctrines of Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance” (Aug. 23, 1753), Livingston delves into the heart of the matter:

The Study of human Nature will teach us, that Man in his original Structure and Constitution, was designed to act in a natural and moral Dependence on his Maker alone, and created solely for the Enjoyment of his own Happiness. His being a rational Creature necessarily implies in him a Freedom of Action, determinable by the Dictates of his own Reason, the self-resolving Exertions of his own Volition, and a Reverence to the Laws prescribed to him by his omnipotent Creator. From these three Heads, as from a copious Fountain, flow the whole Variety of moral Obligations. This Liberty of Action, however modified by human Policy, cannot in the Nature of Things be separated from his Existence. For by admitting the Rationality of Man, you necessarily suppose him a free Agent. And as no political Institutions can deprive him of his Reason, they cannot by any Means, destroy his native Privilege of acting freely.

He then adds:

It is evident, that Man is a Being imbued with an unalienable Right to think and act freely, according to the Dictates of a self-determining Will. Nor can a Subordination to his omnipotent Maker, be supposed in the least to restrain his natural Liberty. For tho’ the Laws of his Reason, or the Will of his Creator, which in Effect are the same Things, as they influence his moral Actions, inhibit him the Practice of Evil; our original State of Rectitude must properly be considered.

And from the same essay:

By reasoning in this Manner, we obtain the following determinate Idea of Government: It is an human Establishment, depending on the free Consent of Mankind, whereby one or more Individuals are elevated above the Rest, and clothed by them with their united Power, which is to be exercised in an invariable Pursuit of the Welfare of the Community, and in compelling the Practice of Justice, and prohibiting the Contrary. From this Definition of Government, the Truth of the subsequent Propositions may be fairly argued.

And again from the same essay:

Passive Obedience and Non-Resistence, are often arrogated as the Rights of Princes, and the Duty of Subjects, upon a Supposition that the former are the Viceregents of Heaven: But the Truth is, they receive not their Authority from God, but from the People, as has been shewn in my last. Let it, however, for the present be supposed, in the first Sense of the Word, that the Powers that are, are ordained of God. It will follow that they are bound, in Consequence of their pretended Commission, to do nothing that is inconsistent with, or contrary to the Will of that Being whose Rectitude is infinite and unerring; and therefore, that they are not warranted by such Delegation, in committing Acts of Cruelty, Violence and Oppression. And if they are distinguished from their Subjects by nothing but a Commission to do Good, as the Case must necessarily be upon the Supposition of a Viceregency, whenever they exceed the Bounds of that Commission, they are to be considered as perpetrating Evil, and therefore must be resisted.

There are many other essays. One of them, “A Vindication of the Moravians,” is a defense of the Moravian Brethren, the religious group that brought the music of Johann Sebastian Bach to America, who were suffering persecution in several colonies. Other titles include: “A Defense of Ridicule,” “Of Credulity,” The Advantage of Education,” “Of Human Nature and the Immortality of the Soul,” “On Patriotism” and “Of the Waste of Life.”

The Hammer Falls—the Fight Continues

By the autumn of 1753, New York’s provincial leadership was determined to silence Livingston and his allies. In September the Triumvirate launched a second weekly publication, The Occasional Reverberator, wherein their polemics intensified, now even naming the names of their political opponents. Massive pressure by the Province’s elite caused the publication to be shut down after only four issues. Sentiments such as the following excerpt from the Reverberator simply could not be allowed to circulate:

Therefore, when this Right of Liberty is infringed by Civil Government, such Government is degenerated into Usurpation and Tyranny; and the Right of Self-defence, in the Oppressed, is under no other Regulation, than that of Prudence.

Then, in November, Livingston’s publisher, James Parker, was threatened that he would lose his position as the Royal Printer in New York and suffer other consequences if he continued to print the Independent Reflector, and that publication was suppressed as well.

Cartoon by Philip Dawe, 1775

The Alternative of Williams-Burg. Williamsburg’s Liberty Men gave loyalists a choice of signing allegiance to their cause, or visiting the Liberty Tree for a tarring and feathering.

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Undeterred, Livingston and Scott recruited a former publisher of the defunct New-York Evening Post—the Peter Zenger-trained Henry De Forest—to come out of retirement, and beginning in February 1754, Livingston, Scott and Smith issued a series of broadsides, leaflets and pamphlets, written under pseudonyms such as Joseph Plain Truth, Common Sense, and Publicola. They even managed to publish a serialized column in the New-York Mercury, titled “The Watch-Tower,” which ran for a year (November 1754 to November 1755). To understand why Cadwallader Colden labeled the Triumvirate as the “Hornets of Rebellion,” look no further than the Watch-Tower column of January 27, 1755, in which Livingston declares, “If a People can be presumed to have a Right to oppose the undue Measures of an arbitrary Ruler, when they strike at the very Vitals of the Constitution, they are certainly justifiable, in opposing them not only with the Pen, but even with Sword.”

Subsequently, Livingston would form a partnership with John Holt and co-found the New-York Journal, the newspaper which became the voice of the Sons of Liberty.

By the 1760s the political situation in New York was characterized by a bitter rivalry between William Livingston and his allies versus the British Monarchy’s representatives. These included the Royal Governor and the political faction headed by the powerful De Lancey family. That battle would rage for more than 15 years, and it would also be a determining factor in the creation and changing character of the Sons of Liberty.

III. The Sons of Liberty

The 1763 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years (and French and Indian) War, was a watershed event for the human species. With the defeat of France in North America, India and elsewhere, Britain now possessed a global empire:—This was, in fact, the beginning of rapacious, oligarchical British world rule. This also marked the ominous turning-point for the American colonies, as London acted to eradicate the spirit and intention which had characterized that culture from its origin. The colonies were to be crushed politically, looted economically and fully integrated into Britain’s global imperial system.

In 1763, British Prime Minister George Grenville issued a proclamation prohibiting settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, reserving the land for the Indians, and restricting commerce with the Indians to only those licensed in London. One British official stated that it was urgent to keep the colonists “as near as possible to the ocean,” so that they would remain “subservient to the Commerce of their Mother Country.”

Then, between 1763 and 1765 a series of taxes were levied on the colonies. First came the Molasses Tax. This was followed by taxes on Sugar, Coffee, Indigo and other commodities. At the same time, Parliament acted to take complete control of all trade both with and within the colonies. Prior to 1763 colonial trade was overseen by the Board of Trade. After the Treaty of Paris that arrangement was abolished, and Parliament dictated all trade issues.

On September 1, 1764 the Currency Act was adopted, prohibiting the colonies from printing paper currency or circulating paper notes. That same act required that all of the Royal taxes be paid in Sterling. With a scarcity of Sterling and other hard specie in the colonies, this Act was an economic death blow. Shortly thereafter, the Mutiny Act was passed. This mandated that the colonies pay for the stationing and upkeep of British troops in the colonies, essentially an Army of Occupation.

Alexander McDougall

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Defending God-Given Freedom

In December, 1763 the New York Sons of Liberty is founded by Alexander McDougall. Livingston’s partner, John Morin Scott, attends the founding meeting and becomes an active member. Their view is clear:—If the actions of Parliament and the Crown were allowed to stand—if they were greeted with what Livingston had earlier called “Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance”—this meant the death of the human experiment which had been initiated some 140 years earlier.

Then, on March 22, 1765 the Stamp Act was enacted. It required that every document in the colonies, including deeds, wills, sales-of-purchase, newspapers, letters, etc. must be printed on “stamped paper,” all of which was printed in England and had to be imported and purchased with Sterling. This was not simply a tax;—it struck directly at the American colonist’s ability to communicate, deliberate or conduct business.

On June 6, 1765 John Morin Scott authored an article for John Holt’s New-York Journal declaring that if the rights of the colonies could not be protected, “then the Connection between them [Britain and the colonies] ought to cease—And sooner or later it must inevitably cease.” Britain could not insist that the colonies be governed by “principles diametrically opposite to its own without losing itself in the slavery it would impose upon the Colonies.”[fn_2]

In October the first British ship carrying stamped paper arrives in New York harbor. More than 200 merchants and other members of the colony convene at Burns’ Coffee House and pass a resolution declaring non-importation of all British goods until the Stamp tax is repealed. They also deploy volunteers to nearby colonies such as New London, and letters are sent to Boston, Albany, Portsmouth, Newport and other colonies requesting coordinated actions and establishing a permanent communication network. This is the actual informal beginning of what would become the Committees of Correspondence.

On December 17 John Morin Scott, writing under the name “Freeman,” issues a new Broadside. It declares:

These sacred Rights we receive from God in our Nature, and for their Preservation we are accountable both to Him, and to Posterity, to whom it is our indispensable Duty to hand them down inviolate as we received them from our Ancestors.

The Laws and Constitution of the Government of England, our native Country, are founded upon these Laws of God and Nature, and on that Account, receive all their value.—On that Account, the People by Common Consent, exalt Men naturally their Equals, to be Magistrates and Rulers over them, and endow them with Riches and Honour; and with Power to enforce the Laws for the public Good,—to protect Individuals in the Enjoyment of their Rights, and to restrain or punish Oppressors. . . .

Who, that deserves the Name of an Englishman, would see an open Attempt made to destroy, and for ever root it out from America, without exerting all his Power, and hazarding his Life and Fortune for its Preservation?

On February 14, 1766, the New York Sons issue another circular letter calling on citizens “to assemble as many of the true Sons of Liberty as you possibly can.” Chapters are formed in many smaller cities such as Schenectady and Oyster Bay. Philadelphia responds that they are organizing a chapter, and responses are received from Maryland, New Jersey, Norfolk, Virginia, and South Carolina. Some of these chapters also join with New York in establishing the Military Association of the Sons of Liberty, i.e., armed militia units.

Oliver De Lancey

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Republican Citizens or a Jacobin Mob?

In October of 1765 Oliver De Lancey, the god-father of the British Crown/Anglican Church party in New York, in an action that might at first perplex the modern reader, publicly declared his undying loyalty to the Sons of Liberty. De Lancey went even further and organized a faction, led by Isaac Sears and John Lamb, which effectively took control of the Sons for a number of years. During that period, De Lancey’s followers were among the most militant and most violent of the Sons’ membership. De Lancey/Sears would battle Livingston/McDougall for four years for control of the New York Sons of Liberty.

Much more will be said about Alexander McDougall later in this report, but here it should be noted that he did not shy away from militant action. Nay, he often led it. It was McDougall who, in 1774, led a group of “Mohawks” that boarded the ship London and dumped its tea in New York harbor, and it was McDougall, who, when news of the Declaration of Independence reached New York on July 9, 1776, led a march of soldiers and citizens to the Bowling Green where the equestrian statue of King George III was pulled down from its pedestal. Yet, McDougall was not a “mob leader.” Despite his humble background he worked closely with William Livingston and was motivated by the principles enunciated in the Independent Reflector.

McDougall’s target was always the British oppressors. His message was always the urgent necessity to fight the destruction of the natural God-given liberties and rights of the inhabitants of the colonies. De Lancey’s forces on the other hand were deployed to provoke violence for violence’s sake, to carry out numerous provocations, all of which resulted in British reprisals. Meanwhile, De Lancey, his friends in the Anglican Church and the Royal Governor would ensure that British interests were never seriously threatened. Livingston, Morin Scott and McDougall were the real targets.

During the 1765-1769 period when the De Lancey faction held sway in the New York Sons, their message began to emphasize their “trust” in the King, and to portray him as a victim of those in Parliament who, it was alleged, were the true authors of the acts of oppression. This led to a deliberately impotent “petition campaign,” which spread to other colonies, with the submitting of numerous petitions to “our friend” King George (similar to what John Wilkes and his followers were doing in England). Others viewed the petitions as useless and degrading, and George Washington asked: Should the colonists “whine and cry for relief, when we have already tried it in vain”?

Painting by William Walcutt, 1854

Pulling down the statue of King George III in New York’s Bowling Green on July 9, 1776.

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The problem of mob violence and provocateurs which De Lancey fostered in New York, also existed in other colonies. During this period, the majority of those who became active in the Sons of Liberty were drawn from the working classes (the “Mechanics”) or even the poor. Their actions were often irrational, and they were easily manipulated. This problem was manifested in New England, for example, with phenomena such as the anti-Catholic Pope’s Night movement, and the 1772 Gaspee Affair. The need to oppose such senseless violence was recognized by both John and Sam Adams at the time of the Boston Massacre.

The paramount challenge for the actual leaders in Boston, Virginia and elsewhere—as well as in New York—was to create Republican Citizens:—to recruit from among the ordinary blacksmiths, carpenters, seamen and farmers those who would grasp and embrace the higher principles, the higher purpose of the fight for liberty.

The Cauldron Bubbles

The Stamp Act was repealed on March 18, 1766, but that repeal was accompanied by the simultaneous passage of the Declaratory Act which claimed for Parliament the authority to legislate for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” Even the supposed “friend” of the colonies, Prime Minister William Pitt, declared that Parliament can “bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatsoever.”[fn_3]

In June of 1767, the new Prime Minister Charles Townshend introduced a bill for taxes on glass, lead, paint, paper and tea. The same bill also authorized unlimited “writs of assistance,” whereby customs officials could enter businesses and homes to seize allegedly “smuggled” goods. Another bill, the Restraining Act, suspended the New York Assembly until it complied with the Quartering Act for housing the British Army of Occupation.

Then, on November 8, 1768 King George delivered a speech to Parliament, wherein he declared a “state of Disobedience to all Law and Government” in the colonies, and a “Disposition to throw off their Dependence to Great Britain.” This was shortly followed by calls in Parliament to arrest and punish those in the colonies involved in treason against the Crown.

In New York, De Lancey’s balancing act between the militant Sons and his British patrons began to crumble. The situation came to a head when, on Dec. 15, 1769, the New York Assembly passed a De Lancey/Colden-sponsored bill to provide revenue for the quartering and support of the British soldiers. At this point both Isaac Sears and John Lamb, who were the “street fighters” of the Sons, broke with De Lancey and went over to the Livingston party. At the same time McDougall took the lead in fighting against the Quartering Act, calling for a complete boycott—non-importation—of British goods until the Quartering Act was repealed. On December 16, 1769 McDougall anonymously authored a Broadside titled “To the Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York.” In it, McDougall proclaims that the British troops are “kept here, not to protect but, to enslave us.” And he continues:

Is this a state to be rested in, when all is at stake? No, my Countrymen, rouse!. . . Will you suffer your liberties to be torn from you, by your own representatives? Tell it not in Boston; publish it not in the streets of Charles-Town. The Royal soldiers are in the colonies to awe us into submission to the arbitrary and unconstitutional claims of the Commons of Great Britain, which if carried into execution will enslave us.

The December 16 Broadside creates a furor, and it is condemned by the New York Assembly by a vote of 20 to 1, the single vote of opposition being cast by Alexander Hamilton’s future father-in-law Philip Schuyler. Then, on December 18, a mass meeting is organized and the New York Sons of Liberty is reorganized under McDougall’s leadership.

McDougall’s authorship of the Broadside is discovered, and he is arrested on February 8, 1770. He refuses to pay the 2,000-pound bail and spends 80 days in jail. William Livingston’s partner John Morin Scott serves as his lawyer. McDougall is hailed as a martyr, not only in New York, but throughout the colonies. Livingston authors an article in John Holt’s newspaper condemning the presence and actions of the British Army.

McDougall would be arrested again, in December, on the same charge stemming from a Broadside of one year earlier. He spends another 82 days in jail (for a total of 162 days in a twelve month period).

Throughout 1770 and 1771 an intense ongoing battle rages between the De Lancey and Livingston parties in New York. With the backing of the Governor, the Church and the Army, as well as his still formidable political machine, De Lancey succeeds in lifting the non-importation boycott and forcing full compliance with the Quartering Act.

Engraving by W.D. Cooper, circa 1789

Americans Throwing the Cargoes of the Tea Ships into the River, at Boston, December 16, 1773.

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Tea

Due to the efforts of Benjamin Franklin, as well as the violent opposition to the Townshend duties in the colonies, the British Parliament voted to repeal all of the duties except the tax on Tea. Then, in April of 1773, the House of Commons passed the Tea Act, allowing the East India Company to sell tea directly in America. News of this reached New York on September 6.

On October 13 a mass meeting is organized against the tea shipments by McDougall. Together, with other members of the Sons, a “Committee of Vigilance” is formed, which distributes 1,500 copies of a leaflet (signed by “The Mohawks”) warning of consequences if tea is allowed to be unloaded. John Holt’s Journal publishes “Alarm #1,” authored by McDougall. Letters are sent to the other colonies requesting coordination of action, and on December 7—nine days before the Boston Tea Party—a reply is received from Boston, stating that they are ready to act.

These actions are followed on December 17, when another mass meeting issues a pledge to use force, if necessary, to resist the unloading of East India tea. They formally elect a Committee of Correspondence, consisting of Sears, Lamb, McDougall, and several other Liberty Boys, to establish official communications with patriots in other colonies. Four days later they receive word of the Boston Tea Party.

IV. Oligarchical Lunatics & Intolerable Actions

Between 1773 and 1775 Benjamin Franklin was engaged in non-stop political and intelligence warfare in London. All to no avail. Franklin’s reasoned argument that the imperial course of British policy would result in catastrophe found no takers, except among a small minority, none of whom were in a position of power.

Between March and May of 1774 Parliament enacted a new series of bills, these sponsored by the new Prime Minister Lord North, which were quickly dubbed the “Coercive Acts”— renamed the “Intolerable Acts” in America. The Boston Port Act closed the Port of Boston, as punishment for destroying the tea of the East India Company; The Massachusetts Government Act abolished its 1691 Charter and placed the colonial government under top-down Royal control; a new more severe Quartering Act was passed, in order to accommodate the large number of troops now to be sent to Boston and other cities; and an Act for the Impartial Administration of Justice allowed for a change of venue, so that those accused of crimes against the Crown could be tried in another Royal Colony or even in London.

In May, 1774 news of the Intolerable Acts reaches New York. McDougall and Sears immediately activate the Committee of Correspondence. They send communications to Boston, Philadelphia, New Haven, Charleston, Newport, Georgia and North Carolina urging support for Boston, non-importation and joint economic action against Britain.

On May 16 a turbulent mass meeting is held. Despite the crisis, the De Lancey faction is able to postpone a decision on nonimportation, and the meeting nominates a fifty-member committee to direct the city’s response to the Intolerable Acts. The De Lancey crowd has a majority on the Committee. Certain key figures such as John Jay and John Morin Scott are elected, but (the eventual loyalist) Isaac Low is named Chairman, and the McDougall/Sears forces are in the minority.[fn_4]

With the creation of the Committee of 50, a Dual Power reality emerged in New York. The official government institutions, such as the Assembly, still existed, but actual power began to shift to the structures created by the revolutionary ferment, none of which had any official sanction. A similar process unfolded in all of the colonies. De Lancey, Low and their allies did not attempt to stem this tide. Instead they joined the new organizations, fought to take control, and acted to prevent any further escalation.

On May 17 Paul Revere returns to New York with the Boston Circular Letter, which advocates an immediate embargo on trade with Britain until Parliament repeals the Intolerable Acts. Emboldened by this news, and frustrated by the De Lancey stalling tactics, McDougall and Sears act independently and nominate a new 25-person Committee of Correspondence, composed almost entirely of Sons of Liberty and Livingston adherents. At McDougall’s request, backed by John Jay, Revere is sent off with letters—from this ad hoc new Committee—for the patriots in Philadelphia and Boston, calling for the convening of a continental congress to deal with the crisis.[fn_5]

Isaac Low’s Committee of 50 denounces the McDougall/Sears action and declares their new committee illegitimate. A compromise is reached on May 19, and it is decided to create a new Committee of 51, with greater representation for the McDougall-allied Sons of Liberty and voting rights for the working class Mechanics. De Lancey, however, still maintains a slim majority. The Committee of 51 is also declared as the official New York branch of the Committees of Correspondence. A four-person sub-committee is named, including John Jay and McDougall, to handle communications with Boston.[fn_6] At McDougall’s request, a letter is sent to Sam Adams in Boston, calling for an inter-colonial meeting. The letter says, “that a Congress of Deputies from the principal colonies is of the utmost moment; that it ought to be assembled without delay, and some unanimous resolution formed in this fatal emergency, not only respecting your deplorable circumstances, but for the security of our common rights.” Privately, McDougall gives Revere a second letter, written by him, to deliver to Boston, urging Adams to immediately decide on a time and place for the proposed Congress to meet. The same proposal is also sent to Philadelphia.

Philip Livingston

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On July 6 the Sons of Liberty, acting independent of the Committee of 51, organizes a public meeting in the Fields (Commons), near Kings College, to be chaired by McDougall. McDougall calls for a complete halt of all trade with Britain. He also proposes a slate of delegates to the expected Continental Congress. The meeting approves his slate, along with resolutions condemning the Boston Port Bill, endorsing non-importation, and instructing the five delegates, if elected, to support a nonimportation agreement in the new Congress. The next day John Holt prints the resolutions in his paper and they are posted throughout the city. It was at this July 6 meeting that a young King’s College student named Alexander Hamilton asked that he be allowed to speak.[fn_7] Hamilton condemns the closure of the Port of Boston, endorses the planned Continental Congress and strongly supports a complete boycott of trade with Britain. For the next twelve months Hamilton will serve as an active member of the Sons of Liberty.

The next day everything blows up. De Lancey and Low get the Committee of 51 to condemn McDougall’s “rump” meeting and censure McDougall and all those involved. Sears, McDougall and nine of their allies walk out of the meeting, resigning from the 51. Weeks later another compromise is worked out, but only after McDougall secures a firm pledge that the delegates to the Congress will support a boycott of British goods and that the Committee of 51 will abide by the decisions of the new Congress.

The Next Step

The Continental Congress convenes on October 22, 1774. In one of its first actions it established the “Continental Association,” to enforce the trade boycott, and it directed each colony to set up local committees, for the purpose of enforcing the boycott.

On October 28 John Jay’s “Address to the People of Great Britain” is read to the Congress by William Livingston, with a wildly enthusiastic reception. Jay accuses Britain of instituting “a system of slavery” after 1763, and he declares, “We will never submit to be hewers of wood or drawers of water for any ministry or nation in the world.”

As the Continental Congress begins its deliberations, the Committees of Correspondence go into high gear. Riders crisscross the colonies, delivering news of the proceedings and accepting messages from Boston, Hartford, New York, Albany, Philadelphia, Charleston and many other cities.

In New York, as a result of the decisions taken in Philadelphia, the Committee of 51 is abolished and a new Committee of 60 is created. This is formed to function as the official branch of the Continental Association and it becomes known as the Committee of Inspection. In elections to the new Committee, the Livingston party, particularly members of the Sons of Liberty, achieve a majority, finally breaking the grip of the De Lancey faction.

On December 15 Alexander Hamilton’s “A Full Vindication of the Measures of the Continental Congress” is published, in reply to the loyalist Samuel Seabury (A.W. Farmer). In it, Hamilton argues that the issue is not about taxes, but “whether the inhabitants of Great Britain have a right to dispose of the lives and properties of the inhabitants of America or not?” This dispute continues for three months, ending with Hamilton’s “A Farmer refuted,” in March 1775.

Through the early months of 1775, the Committee of Inspection takes de facto control of New York City. The boycott is enforced, and several British ships are turned away from the harbor. On March 22, delegates are chosen for a Second Continental Congress, including John Jay, Philip Livingston, James Duane, and from upstate, Philip Schuyler, Lewis Morris and George Clinton. Except for the fence-sitter Duane, none are associated with the De Lancey party.

War

On April 23 news arrives in New York of the fighting at Lexington and Concord, and is quickly forwarded to many cities to the south through the Committees of Correspondence.

McDougall proposes a reorganization of the city government and the creation of a Provincial Congress. A new Committee of 100 is created to replace the Committee of Inspection, and after a period of time, largely due to the efforts of Gouverneur Morris and John Jay, a Provincial Congress is created. McDougall is elected to both bodies. At the same time, he takes charge of military preparations for an expected British invasion, and he organizes the first Militia Unit (which Alexander Hamilton joins).

Leaders of the De Lancey faction, top Anglican officials and other loyalists begin to flee the city, with Oliver De Lancey slipping over to Staten Island, where, in July, he would be appointed an officer in General William Howe’s invasion army. At the war’s end, he fled to London.

On June 17 the Battle of Bunker Hill takes place. The war is on.

Hercules Mulligan

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V. Mulligan, McDougall and Hamilton

When, in the autumn of 1772, the seventeen year old Alexander Hamilton arrived in New York, he knew not a soul in the place, but was armed only with several Letters of Introduction, supplied by his tutor on St. Croix, the Rev. Hugh Knox. It is revealing to consider the recipients of those letters. One was addressed to William Livingston, another was to Livingston’s friend Elias Boudinot and a third was to John Rogers, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church.

Before relocating to the Caribbean, in the mid-1750s, the Presbyterian Hugh Knox had studied at the College of New Jersey where he became closely acquainted with all three of these individuals, and he maintained a correspondence with Rogers and Boudinot for many years. Knox’s 1750s association with Livingston and Rogers occurred precisely at the time that The Independent Reflector was being published, and it is inconceivable that he was not familiar with those essays, which were the sensation of New York at the time. In 1772, it was Knox who suggested to Hamilton that he enroll in Francis Barber’s Elizabethtown Academy upon his arrival in America.

Hamilton’s first stop in New York is at Kortright and Cruger, the trading firm for which he had worked in St Croix.[fn_8] Hamilton’s emigration to New York had been financed by his aunt, Ann Lytton Venton, who had arranged for a regular allowance, to be paid through Kortright and Cruger. Hamilton meets the office manager of the firm, Hugh Mulligan, who introduces him to his brother Hercules Mulligan, who, in turn, offers to board the young Hamilton.

While making arrangements to enroll at the Elizabethtown Academy, Hamilton lives briefly with Mulligan, and later, while a student at King’s College he would board with the Mulligan family for some time. Hercules, it turns out, is a leading member of the Sons of Liberty and closely associated with Alexander McDougall. It is possible that Hamilton met McDougall through Mulligan, even at this early date, but there is no record of it. Of that time, Mulligan later wrote, “Mr. H. used in the evenings to sit with my family and my brother’s family and write doggerel rhymes for their amusement; he was always amiable and cheerful and extremely attentive to his books.” Mulligan, of whom more will be said below, is a “street leader” of the Sons, one of the “Liberty Boys,” and had been involved in many fracases, including the 1770 Battle of Golden Hill.

Mulligan also knew William Livingston, and he accompanied Hamilton when he delivered his letter of introduction at Livingston Manor.[fn_9] After Hamilton’s acceptance at the Elizabethtown Academy, William Livingston invites Hamilton to board at the Manor.[fn_10] There, among other experiences, he meets John Jay, who was occupied with courting Livingston’s daughter. He is also befriended by Livingston’s brother-in-law William Alexander, better known as Lord Stirling, and later one of George Washington’s most trusted generals.

A Young Alexander Hamilton, an Engraving by Frederick Thomas Reynolds.

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After about nine months of intensive study as the Academy, Hamilton is ready to enroll in college. He elects to study at King’s College, which is arranged by Lord Stirling, a member of the college’s governing board. Shortly after enrolling, Hamilton authors his first published political piece, “Defence and Destruction of the Tea,” published in John Holt’s New-York Journal, supporting the action of the Boston Tea Party. It is likely he met Holt through William Livingston, who was the co-founder of the Journal. Or, perhaps Hercules Mulligan introduced them.

Today, Hamilton’s “A Full Vindication of the Measures of the Continental Congress” and his “A Farmer Refuted” enjoy justly-deserved fame, but what is less well known is that from 1773 to 1775, while a student at King’s College, Hamilton was a regular contributor to Holt’s Journal. Numerous articles and even some of the most trenchant editorials were anonymously authored by Hamilton. His friends and promoters were well aware of this and promoted his writings. On December 5, 1775 John Jay wrote to Alexander McDougall, “I hope Mr. Hamilton continues busy. I have not received Holt’s paper these three months and therefore cannot judge of the progress he makes.” From November 9, 1775, to February 8, 1776, the New-York Journal ran fourteen installments of “The Monitor,” all authored by Hamilton. These were the longest and most prominently featured string of essays that Holt printed before the Revolution. Hamilton, in fact, became the leading propagandist for the Sons of Liberty.

Hercules Mulligan

Hercules Mulligan (1740-1825) was from a working-class background. Little is known of the intimacies of his life, but as a young adult he took up the occupation of tailor and by no later than 1764 he became a member of the Sons of Liberty. When he met the young Hamilton in 1772, he was 32 years old.

Mulligan took part in many of the battles waged by the Sons, and he would become active in the New York Committee of Correspondence. On July 9, 1776 when the Sons destroyed the statue of King George III on the Bowling Green, reportedly it was Mulligan who threw the first rope around George’s neck to drag him from the pedestal.

In 1775, Mulligan was the prime organizer of the first armed militia brigade in New York, the Corsicans (later renamed the Hearts of Oak). The company drilled in the graveyard of St. Paul’s Chapel, near King’s College. Composed almost entirely of members of the Sons of Liberty, the 20-year-old Hamilton joined this militia, trained with them, and took part in several military clashes. In August the Hearts of Oak, while under fire from HMS Asia, captured four British cannon in the Battery, after which they became an artillery unit, with Hamilton in charge of the cannon.

In February, 1776, when Hamilton was given a commission as a Captain in the regular Army and given the instruction to raise a Company of Artillery, his Sons of Liberty comrades from the Hearts of Oak formed the core of his Company. There was considerable opposition in the Provincial Congress to giving command of the main artillery unit to a 20-year-old college student, but Alexander McDougall and John Jay insisted, and the coveted commission went to Hamilton.

Later, while serving on George Washington’s staff, Hamilton recommended Hercules Mulligan to Washington as a potential patriot spy in New York City. Mulligan then became a member of the Culper spy ring, twice providing information which saved Washington’s life. Since British officers in occupied New York frequented his tailor shop, at the war’s end many New Yorker’s viewed him as an ardent loyalist. To set the record straight, upon entering New York City on Evacuation Day, Washington made a point to publicly stop at Mulligan’s shop and purchase a new suit of clothes. The next morning Mulligan put a sign in his window which read “Clothier to Genl. Washington,” and he was never bothered again.

Domenick D’Andrea

The Delaware Regiment at the Battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776.

Drawing by D. Falls

Capt. Alexander Hamilton, Provincial Company of Artillery, in January, 1776.

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Alexander McDougall

What has been said so far about Alexander McDougall conveys only a part of what he accomplished.

As to background, McDougall came from an immigrant Scottish family, was the son of a farmer and grew up delivering milk in Manhattan. Later he went to sea, became a privateer during the French and Indian War, purchased several ships and traveled up and down the Atlantic seaboard buying and selling goods. By the 1770s he had sold off his shipping concerns and was primarily engaged in mercantile trade.

We pick up his story at the time of the Battle of Bunker Hill. A key leader in both New York City’s Committee of 100 and the New York Provincial Congress, when the fighting broke out McDougall abandoned completely his political career and joined the Army. In March, 1776 he organized the first New York brigade in the Continental Army. On August 9, he was promoted to Brigadier General in the Army.

His brigade was on the front lines in both the Battle of Long Island and the Battle of Harlem Heights. At the subsequent Battle of White Plains, McDougall’s force of 1,500 men bore the brunt of the British attack, and they were supported by Alexander Hamilton, commanding two field pieces (Battle of Chatterton Hill). McDougall’s troops were the last to retreat from the field. Subsequently he would be put in charge of commanding troops in the Hudson Highlands, and it was McDougall who oversaw the laying of a chain across the Hudson River to block British warships. Already at an advanced age for a field commander and ill throughout those years, McDougall would remain in the Hudson River valley for the remainder of the war, except for his participation in the 1777 Battle of Germantown. McDougall’s brigade fought heroically, and after the battle Washington personally wrote to Congress asking for McDougall’s promotion to Major General, which was approved on October 20.

On November 25, 1783, when the victorious Gen. Washington entered New York City, he left his Army at the city limits. McDougall organized an escort to accompany Washington down the length of the island, led by himself and composed primarily of the old guard from the Sons of Liberty.

When McDougall dies in 1786, he is hailed by Washington as a “Pillar of the Revolution.”[fn_11]

Banking and Credit

As all of our readers are aware, Alexander Hamilton’s primary fame stems from his genius in matters of economics and banking. When the war ended in 1783, the public and private finances of the new nation were in a precarious condition. The only reliable financial institution was Robert Morris’ Bank of North America, and it had been greatly weakened by the eight years of war. In New York, businesses, farmers and merchants were desperate for credit, and the resources required to rebuild New York City, which had been greatly damaged by the war, were non-existent.

In New York several incompetent schemes were being floated, including Gov. George Clinton’s plan to issue a state-backed paper currency, which was guaranteed to depreciate in value, and a proposal by Robert Livingston to create a Land Bank, which would greatly benefit the upstate large landowners, such as himself, but would have been of no use for mercantile or manufacturing interests. This plan also authorized the proposed bank to create essentially privately-issued paper money.

Into this mess, in early 1784, Hamilton, together with his brother-in-law John Church, decided to intervene. Privately, they came up with a plan to create a species-bank for New York, modeled somewhat on the Bank of North America.[fn_12] They began discussions with potential subscribers and were planning to go ahead, when Hamilton learned that Alexander McDougall had, at a meeting held on February 24, 1784 at the Merchants Coffee House, publicly proposed an almost identical plan to create a bank along the lines of the Bank of North America. With this news, Hamilton decided to abandon his own initiative and throw in his lot with the group being organized by McDougall.

Some might insist that this remarkable coincidence was all part of the same operation, but in a letter that Hamilton wrote to John Church on March 10, he is explicit that the idea for the bank had independently been put forward by McDougall.

On February 26 a second meeting is held (McDougall chaired both meetings), and the Bank of New York is founded, with a capitalization of $500,000 in gold and silver. It is very clear that Hamilton and McDougall were closely cooperating. Hamilton writes the constitution for the new institution, and he also becomes the bank’s attorney. McDougall is voted the new bank’s President and Hamilton and Isaac Roosevelt directors. Investors include both former members of the Sons of Liberty, as well as previous loyalists. McDougall serves for one year as President and then retires due to illness (he died shortly thereafter), and he is succeeded by Isaac Roosevelt who serves as President until 1791.

Until the founding of the Bank of the United States, the Bank of New York—in addition to its beneficial role in New York State—performed a vital function for the nation. One example is that the bank provided the United States government its first loan in 1789. That loan was orchestrated by Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury, and it paid the salaries of United States Congress and President George Washington.

VI. Committees of Correspondence and Today

Not everyone was transformed by the events of 1763-1783. The rabid hard-core loyalists to the Crown, by-and-large, remained loyalists. Most of them, such as Oliver De Lancey and his ilk, eventually fled to England. But for others, the decisions that were made and the intentions involved are not so clear. Many families were split by the Revolution, including those of Benjamin Franklin and Gouverneur Morris. Peter Van Schaack, one of John Jay’s most intimate friends, refused to support the Declaration of Independence and fled to London. Some of Franklin’s earlier collaborators in scientific investigations, such as Cadwallader Colden, became staunch supporters of the Crown. Even William Smith Jr., the third partner of the Livingston-Scott-Smith Triumvirate, broke with his friends in 1776, allying with the British occupying power and later fleeing to Canada, where he would eventually be appointed Chief Justice of that Royal Province.

And then there were those who fought for the revolution but never abandoned their pre-war prejudices. Isaac Sears and John Lamb are among these. Stalwart members of the Sons of Liberty, ready to fight anyone, anywhere, anytime, they never overcame their self-identities as provocateurs. After the war, Sears and Lamb continued to persecute and expropriate property from the former loyalists, in violation of the 1783 Treaty of Paris. McDougall and Hamilton jointly fought them on this.

But then,—Then there are the tens of thousands of others!—those who were changed, those who were touched by the revived ideals of 1620 and 1630. A new power entered their hearts. The vision of a better, more productive future, a more productive life, a human identity,—this is what was embraced and acted on by many, and this became the intention of the Revolution.

We see this already in William Livingston’s optimism, as it flows from the pages of the Independent Reflector, wherein he discusses the nature of the human condition and the potential for good which exists within each human individual:—Truthful Principles from the past shall govern the Present and the Future, and our willful actions Today shall fulfill the Promise of that Past. The moral impetus embedded in this outlook would define the successful outcome of the Revolution.

This is where the critical role of the Committees of Correspondence comes in. For several years, prior to the outbreak of actual warfare, hundreds of riders traveled day and night, tirelessly, up and down the Eastern Seaboard, stopping at hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cities, towns, villages—even places where there were just a smattering of farmhouses. They didn’t just deliver “news.” Speeches in Congress, articles from John Holt’s newspaper, broadsides, important letters, resolutions and other material were passed from town to town. Often special meetings were called to discuss the communications that had been received. Sometimes speeches or broadsides would be read aloud, over and over again, to small groups of people. And everywhere the riders stopped, they were given new material to pass on to the next town or village.

This was organizing. Many of these people were from different religions and held differing political views and interests, but as issues and initiatives were discussed, and as the principles motivating the fight became ever more clear, people began to change.

Consider the question of the convening of the First Continental Congress in 1775. It is true that Ben Franklin had proposed his Albany Plan of Union in 1754, but even as late as 1770 the individual colonies viewed themselves as completely separate entities, and relations among the colonies were characterized by jealously and hostility. As a number of historians have documented, more mail and other communications passed between London and Philadelphia and London and Boston than between Boston and Philadelphia. The Committees of Correspondence changed all of that. Farmers in North Carolina eagerly awaited news from Boston, and tradesmen in Philadelphia studied the pronouncements from the New York Sons of Liberty. Gradually, the people were knit together in common cause and by universal principles, in one fight. It was this process which made the creation of a Continental Congress possible.

This was a dialogue of revolution. Key Concepts were debated, Motives were questioned, Consequences were considered, Actions were planned, coordinated and carried out. And everywhere the effect was the uplifting of the people to a higher moral and political purpose. Not a gimmick. Not a protest. The only way to effect true historic change.

[fn_1]. Livingston and Scott were both converts to Presbyterianism, the former from the Dutch Reformed Church and the latter a Huguenot. Both joined the First Presbyterian Church in opposition to the influence and teachings of the evangelical “Great Awakening,” which they abhorred. Both also fought the growing power of the Anglican Church in New York. [back to text for fn_1]

[fn_2]. Note that this is 11 years prior to the Declaration of Independence. [back to text for fn_2]

[fn_3]. It should be noted at this point that Benjamin Franklin spent almost the entirety of the 18 years from 1757 to 1775 in London as the representative of Pennsylvania and several other colonies. There he fought the Stamp Act and battled the policies of Grenville and Townshend, under conditions which became increasingly hostile—and dangerous to his life and liberty. [back to text for fn_3]

[fn_4]. Isaac Low served in New York’s Committee of Correspondence, the Committee of 51, the Committee of 60 and was chosen as a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774. In 1776 he refused to support the Declaration of Independence. Later, he became an active British collaborator in occupied New York City, and his property was seized by the New York Assembly. He fled to England where he died in 1791. [back to text for fn_4]

[fn_5]. Early in his career John Jay was loosely associated with the De Lancey interests, but by 1770 he was squarely in the Livingston camp. On April 28, 1774 he married William Livingston’s daughter, Sarah. [back to text for fn_5]

[fn_6]. It is somewhere during this period, or perhaps earlier, that McDougall and Jay become very close collaborators. This will continue through the war, with frequent letters passing between the two. [back to text for fn_6]

[fn_7]. Hamilton’s first public speech. [back to text for fn_7]

[fn_8]. The Crugers were another New York family riven by the Revolution. Nicholas Cruger, who was Hamilton’s employer in St. Croix, became an ardent patriot, was twice imprisoned by the British and, in 1783, accompanied General Washington on his triumphal entry into New York. Several other members of the family went over to the British. [back to text for fn_8]

[fn_9]. It seems highly unlikely that Hamilton’s seemingly chance meeting with Hercules Mulligan and his being in possession of a Letter of Introduction to William Livingston were just happenstance occurrences, but the ultimate truth of such matters will likely never be known for certain. [back to text for fn_9]

[fn_10]. Livingston had moved to New Jersey in 1770. He would serve as that state’s Governor during the Revolutionary War, and in 1788 he became a signer of the U.S. Constitution. [back to text for fn_10]

[fn_11]. I will also say here that several of the key individuals mentioned in this article, including Alexander McDougall, Hercules Mulligan and the Rev. John Rogers, joined with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton in founding the anti-slavery New York Manumission Society in 1785. [back to text for fn_11]

[fn_12]. In fact, the idea of creating a New York bank modeled on the Bank of North America had first been proposed to Hamilton by Gouverneur Morris in 1783. [back to text for fn_12]