#harleyschlanger

These responses once again reflect the fact that adherents to neo-liberal dogma can only see the world through their geopolitical concave glasses, and they obviously underestimate Russia's military science capabilities, just as they underestimated the dynamics of China's New Silk Road for years.

Contrary to the opinion of the Bild newspaper, which says that Putin is a mouse who is squeaking at a lion, Putin is more likely to be the cat among the mice. With the creation of new varieties of weapons based on new physical principles, a very different level is established from, for example, the fairly linear scenarios proposed by the recent CSIS think-tank report in which Russia and China are supposed to be preparing surprise attacks on the Baltic States or the South China Sea. In their other scenarios, it is mooted that China will attack the U.S. with cruise missiles to force it to withdraw from the Pacific, or that China would wipe out the entire American leadership in preparation for an invasion of Taiwan.

The reaction of the pro-party Chinese newspaper Global Times, in an article entitled "U.S. Frightened by its Own Mirror Image," put it in a nutshell: The U.S. fell into the error that an expert at the Office of Net Assessment of the Pentagon had warned about. Andrew Marshall (who, however, is otherwise responsible for a utopian doctrine of air war) had warned that one should not project one's own intentions onto the intentions of other states. For decades, the U.S. has been pursuing a preventive-war military doctrine, while China's military doctrine aims to respond to an attack with a counterattack. Similarly, it is common American practice to eliminate hostile governments through regime change, while the Chinese Communist Party has rejected the idea of assassinating the leadership of hostile governments since the 1920s. And thirdly, it is U.S. policy to focus on nuclear arsenal development to respond to conventional threats and cyber-attacks, while China considers it unwise to own too many nuclear weapons, preferring instead to have only as many as are necessary for deterrence. Drawing conclusions from such mirror images has nothing to do with the real world, and if the U.S. military were to follow this study, they would be scared to death by their own shadow and fail to prepare for real dangers.

A knowledgeable analyst writing under the pseudonym "Publius Tacitus" on the website Sic Temper Tyrannis of well-known security analyst Pat Lang, alludes to the same kind of mirror-image perception trap. He writes that U.S. interference in Ukraine overshadows by far anything that could be blamed on Russia. Recently released documents of the CIA showed the close cooperation of the U.S. intelligence services with Stepan Bandera's OUN since 1946. They show a history of collaboration, from working with the former president Viktor Yushchenko, whose wife had a high position in the U.S. State Department and who declared Bandera to be a Ukrainian national hero, to the direct cooperation with the Nazis in “Maidan II” and the coup against President Yanukovych in February 2014. In fact, one can hardly find a greater distortion than the "narrative" in relation to the events in Ukraine, which provides a large part of the basis for demonization of Putin and Russia.

The same inability to recognize the new paradigm—President Xi Jinping's domestic and foreign policy with its anti-corruption campaign, its absolute focus on scientific and technological innovation, and the win-win cooperation among nations in the New Silk Road Initiative—finds expression in the house organ of the British Empire, the Economist. Under the heading "How the West got China wrong," the decision of the Central Committee to extend President Xi's term of office becomes the reason for lamenting: "They hoped that economic integration would encourage China to evolve into a market economy and that, as they grew wealthier, its people would come to yearn for democratic freedoms, rights and the rule of law." Now, it seems, the West has completely misjudged China. Now China is richer than anyone could have imagined, but instead of yearning to emulate the West, China is offering "Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to solving the problems facing mankind"! Blimey! London lost its bet!

And China recognizes that the one-party system seems to work better than Western partisan conflict, and Chinese politics is profoundly influenced by traditional Chinese culture.

The West has not done its homework on Chinese history and culture and should finally shake off its stereotypes about the second largest economy, reconciling its perception with China's reality. In the future, China will certainly surprise the West and make it even clearer that Beijing will never be a disciple of Washington.

And that's good! The reason Xi Jinping wants to continue his administration lies in the recognition by the Chinese leadership that the coming years will be enormously important years of change for all humanity. President Putin said in his speech, "This is a turning point for the whole world; and those who are willing and able to change, those who act and move forward will take the lead."

In fact, we are currently experiencing an epochal change. The period of nearly 600 years since the Italian Renaissance and the emergence of the sovereign nation state, in which oligarchic forms of government and governments committed to the common good existed side by side, is coming to an end. The new paradigm, a new phase in human evolution, is already visible. The closest approximation to this is Xi Jinping's vision of a “community of common destiny”—the concept that the idea of "one humanity" is set forth to all nations. The economic equivalent of this idea is the New Silk Road, in which all sovereign nations work together on the basis of cooperation for mutual benefit.

What we are currently experiencing, with all the unprovable accusations of "Russian hacking," "interference in democratic elections," "Chinese hegemony," "threats to the Western system of democracy and human rights by authoritarian systems," etc., is nothing more than a last gasp of a failing oligarchic system. The next financial collapse of this system—which has widened the gap between rich and poor, and whose policy of perpetual war has brought us both the refugee crisis and an epidemic of violence among young people and in the so-called entertainment industry—awaits us within a short interval, and will be worse than it was in 2008.

It is time for the rational people to reflect. We should use this new Sputnik shock and do what Putin says in his speech: "Let us sit down at the negotiating table and work together to design a new and relevant system of international security and sustainable development for all of human civilization."

The human species is the only creative species known to us. What sets us apart from all other beings is the ability of the human mind to continually discover qualitatively new principles of the physical universe and apply them to the production process, thus improving the livelihood, productivity, and life expectancy of humanity. We have arrived at the point in history where we can and must realize our identity as a planetary species, which is collectively capable of guaranteeing its long-term survival.

SUPPORTING MATERIAL

Putin's Weapons Statements Intended To Explain U.S. BMD Won't Work

Comments by one or more unnamed military-diplomatic sources to TASS indicate that the official Russian view of the announcements of new nuclear weapons systems made by Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 1 is, that the ballistic missile defense systems that the U.S. is surrounding Russia with can be stopped by making clear that they won't work.

According to one military-diplomatic source, Russia has begun series production of the Avangard missile-hypersonic vehicle complex, and the Khinzhal hypersonic cruise missile, which is launched from the MiG-31M high altitude intercepter, is already "on duty." The missiles"which Americans are determined to roll out as a global anti-missile and air defense system, have no military value now after Russia's presentations of new weapons,"the source said. Western counterparts, therefore,"need to realize it and sit at the negotiating table to talk about overwhelming security but not saber-rattling. The parity should not be breached as the United States and NATO have been attempting for many years,"he said. It is time for the West to accept the new reality, rather than to keep "harping on" the anti-missile defense system. "Nobody, but Russia, has a hypersonic weapon," the source underlined.

In a second report, TASS also cites a military-diplomatic source reporting that Russia has completed trials of a miniaturized nuclear power unit to be installed on cruise missiles and underwater drones. Again the intent is to show"uncooperative Western partners ... the futility of their attempts to neutralize our strategic potential by the deployment of missile shield elements."

Andrey Sushentsov, the Valdai Discussion Club's program director, told TASS that Washington now needs to build dialogue with Moscow on strategic stability. According to Sushentov, the end of the Cold War gave U.S. leaders an illusion that they can easily ignore "inconvenient" Russia."Moreover, an opinion that circulates in U.S. military circles is that strategic stability no longer exists and the United States has the capacity to deal a crushing blow to Russia,"Sushentsov continued."The announcement of Russia's advanced weaponry destroys this stereotype. Currently, an equal dialogue on rules of co-existence is gaining importance again."

An Olive Branch from Putin; Another from Trump; and a Big Surprise from Italy  

Writing this week about Russian President Vladimir Putin's speech heard round the world on new Russian economic policies and new-technology strategic weapons systems, the former Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov stressed, "Russia is offering an olive branch, not nuclear war." This is true. The sane response to Putin's announcements is clear, and elements of it are already being advanced by some veterans of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Revive the SDI, as a crash program, based on technological cooperation between the United States and Russia, with the aim of developing missile interception based on new physical principles and the latest plasma and directed-energy technologies.

It was presented in full in early 1984 in The LaRouche Doctrine: Draft Memorandum of Agreement between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R on conditions for peace, technology and economic policies for development of third countries, weapons policies and arms control negotiations.

Putin is now offering a second opportunity for that new paradigm of peace. The first time, the Bush-Kissinger circles redirected the SDI to merely "anti-missile missiles," and then took the United States out of the ABM Treaty in 2002. Thinking Russia ruined, with only its strategic nuclear missile force left, the Bush plan — Obama continued it — was to ring Russia with anti-missile interceptors and knock Russia out of even the nuclear power club. Putin has just dramatically demonstrated what a strategic failure that policy was; his announcements present the opportunity to negotiate equally again as great powers. That can lead to a revived Strategic Defense Initiative, and more — to using new physical principles to defend the Earth against asteroid or meteor strikes, and to upgrade power production, industry, agriculture, medicine as LaRouche explained in 1984.

President Donald Trump, who appreciates great power relations of mutual benefit despite all attacks on him for it, also made his most explicit statements that his policy toward Korea, is cooperation with China to get direct talks with North Korea, denuclearization and peace on the Peninsula. This alone can get the desired result, if any policy can.

The President is resisting the whole of Washington in refusing to aim his trade penalties at China and Russia alone, as demanded by British imperial-style geopolitics. He has to go further, and join the United States to the new paradigm of economic development and peace represented by China's Belt and Road Initiative. That depends on candidates and elected officials in the 2018 election campaigns demanding it, with the U.S. economic policies known as the "Four Laws" of LaRouche.

In a welcome surprise, voters in Italy have just voted for national candidates who ran on policy actions LaRouche has put forward: Glass-Steagall breakup of megabanks, and national banking to provide credit for industry and infrastructure. His movement in Italy, known as Movisol, has said in a post-election statement: "Movisol is the only force in Italy which can put together all parties, despite their differences, on these 5 points: LaRouche's four laws and [China's] New Silk Road. A government can, and must, be formed on the basis of this..."

These are crucial openings for a new paradigm of human progress.

"Experts Aghast!"

Your friendly fake-news media is now telling you, in regards to President Putin's speech of just one week ago, that "Oh, we knew about it all along—and anyway, it's not true." But in the unguarded early hours right after that speech, they inadvertently let some of the truth slip out. NPR titled a Mar. 1 wire, "Experts Aghast at Russian Claim of Nuclear-Powered Missile with Unlimited Range." They quoted Edward Geist, a researcher specializing in Russia at the Rand Corporation, "I'm still kind of in shock. My guess is they're not bluffing, that they've flight-tested this thing. But that's incredible."

And that's just what we've confirmed, in the sense that the leading Western scientists and Russian specialists who are paid to know about these things, knew nothing. They were completely in the dark.

Now that State of the Union message of President Putin has many implications, and they're still only just beginning to hit home. First and probably most important, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche has stressed—whatever anyone may imagine otherwise, the "unipolar world" fantasy is dead. The 2016 election of Donald Trump was a body-blow to the notion that American "muscle" would dominate the world militarily in behalf of British "brains," but now it is dead forever.

And then, ask what our intelligence agencies were doing with their untold billions of dollars, besides tapping everyone's phones? In searching for the Russians under our beds and in our White House, they seem to have missed everything of importance about what real Russians have been doing for up to 15 years.

Now move on to some of the most obvious implications for space exploration and, bound up within it, for the future of the world economy. Taken as a whole, the final third of President Putin's speech, the part which laid out new weapons systems (especially its closing sentences), made it clear that humanity is within close reach of a nuclear-powered space plane, which would provide vastly better access to space than rockets, the space shuttle, or anything else available today. The original space plane was the brainchild of the late Austrian scientist Eugen Saenger, whose approach was supported by Lyndon LaRouche and such other experts as the late lamented U.S. "astronaut's astronaut," John Young. But a nuclear-powered space plane, which now comes into prospect, is far superior to the conventional fuel-burning designs of the past and present—until we have a fusion-powered space plane. (It is of interest, though, that China flight-tested a scaled-down version of a conventional space plane on Mar. 2.)

How about nuclear power? U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and also the Canadian government, are trying to progress towards eventual assembly-line production of small modularized nuclear reactors. These will have enormous importance especially for less-developed areas in Asia, Africa and Ibero-America. But Putin's Russia seems to have the jump on us here as well. President Putin said that Russia had developed a "small-scale heavy-duty nuclear energy unit that can be installed in a missile like... the American Tomahawk missile " Anyone happen to know the diameter of a Tomahawk missile? It is 20 inches. He also said that the nuclear energy unit made for Russia's new undersea drone was more powerful than those of their nuclear submarines, while a hundred times smaller.

Two additional advances announced by President Putin bear especially on the drive for fusion power under Lyndon LaRouche's "Four Laws," which are the basis of the LaRouche PAC 2018 campaign. First, although no details were given, there have been advances in lasers. Second, in speaking of the new Mach 20 guided atmospheric delivery vehicle, Putin said, "The use of new composite materials has made it possible to enable the gliding cruise bloc to make a long-distance guided flight practically in conditions of plasma formation." Indeed those conditions at Mach 20 are closely comparable to those in the "fireball" re-entry of the Space Shuttle to earth atmosphere—but the latter can only be sustained for a brief period. Here Putin's remarks seem to indicate that there have been new advances in the physics of the gaseous/plasma shock-front, building on the progress begun in the past by Bernhard Riemann and carried forward later by Prandtl, Busemann and others.

To now sum all this up from a different, cultural point of view: we are now entering into a new period of rapid technological attrition—one different from, and yet in a way comparable to the period from the launching of Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957, until John F. Kennedy's assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, or somewhat later. An earlier period when only a minority of our presently living citizens had yet been born.

The coup provoked a chain of events which the U.S., London and NATO used as justification to impose punitive sanctions against Russia, while demonizing Russia's President Putin, asserting that the he was engaged in military operations in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, to reverse the coup. Efforts to stop the fighting between the regime's armed forces and ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine led to the Minsk Accord in 2015, which included a cease fire and the granting of autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk. The Minsk Accord was brokered by France, Germany and Russia.

On January 18, 2018, the Ukrainian Parliament ripped up the Minsk Accord, referring to the two republics as "temporarily occupied" by an "aggressor country," that is, Russia, and vowed to reintegrate them, by military force if necessary. This bill, which received the full support of Ukraine's President Poroshenko, has been described by the Russian Foreign Ministry as "a preparation for a new war." It occurs simultaneously with an outburst of war-like propaganda from western neocons, typified by a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), released on February 20 with the title, "Coping with Surprise in Great Power Conflicts." The report charges that both Russia and China are preparing for war against the U.S., and that the Russians are deploying forces and artillery to overrun the Baltic states in a lightening strike, to reincorporate them into a new Russian empire!

What is also not yet publicly known, but is now coming into focus due to Congressional investigations of the role of British secret agent, Christopher Steele, a "former" MI6 operative, is that the dirty alliance behind the coup, and the subsequent escalation of anti-Russian, war-like hysteria, is the same network running the Russiagate scam as a regime change coup against U.S. President Trump.

THE CASE OF PAUL MANAFORT

This background is necessary to understand the vicious hostility behind the targeting of Paul Manafort, a long-time U.S. political operative, by the "amoral legal assassin", special counsel Robert Mueller. Manafort, who served as Donald Trump's campaign manager at a key moment in his fight to secure the Republican nomination, from May to August 2016, was indicted by Mueller on October 27, 2017, charged with numerous counts of money laundering, tax fraud, not registering as an agent of a foreign government, and of making false statements to the FBI. Mueller filed a revised indictment on February 28, 2018, following his "turning" of Manafort's partner Rick Gates, who filed a guilty plea to a single count on February 22. While awaiting trial in September, Manafort is confined to house arrest.  None of the charges against Manafort are related to the initial mandate given to Mueller, by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, to investigate the allegations of Russian hacking and sundry meddling in the 2016 election, and whether Donald Trump had "colluded" with the Russians. However, they are directly related to the geopolitical manipulations against Russia, which have been sharply criticized by Trump, both as a candidate and as President.

Manafort was first placed under surveillance following a FISA Court order in 2014. FISA, the super-secret court set up as part of the post-9/11 apparatus to spy on potential terrorists, granted the surveillance order as part of an investigation into alleged illegal lobbying on behalf of the Yanukovic government of Ukraine by Manafort and others. Note that the timing of the court order coincided with the 2014 coup in Ukraine. Manafort had been working for several years as an adviser to the Party of the Regions, which was the party of President Yanukovic, who was overthrown by the regime change coup.

The original FISA warrant targeting Manafort was subsequently not renewed, for lack of evidence. A second order, however, was approved by the FISA Court for surveillance of Manafort sometime during 2016—the exact date of the order has not been released—likely around the time Manafort took over the reins of the Trump campaign. Manafort played a key role in holding the Trump coalition together heading into the Republican convention July 18-21, as Bush-directed "Never-Trumpers" were attempting to steal the nomination away from him.

Prior to the convention, Manafort was involved in the successful fight to remove language from the party's platform which called for providing lethal weapons to the Poroshenko government, allegedly to fight against "Russian subversion." Manafort had the backing of Trump for this, as Trump had campaigned for an end to U.S. support for regime change wars, such as the Obama-neocon coup in Ukraine.

Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, a leading campaigner for tougher sanctions against Russia—he was one of the authors of the initial anti-Russia sanctions, in the Magnitsky Act—accused Trump and Manafort of changing the platform to benefit Russia, which he accused of robbing Ukraine of sovereignty! It is now reported that Manafort's role in changing the language in the platform is "under investigation" by Mueller!

(Manafort was also instrumental in including a plank supporting restoration of Glass Steagall banking separation, something vehemently opposed by Wall Street and the City of London financial institutions.)

It was during this same time period, June and July, once it was evident that, barring some unforeseen event, Trump would be the Republican nominee, that the anti-Trump activities of the "Deep State" went into high gear. While the "Never Trumpers" were unsuccessfully plotting to prevent his nomination at the convention, Christopher Steele began churning out memos, paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, which included wild claims about Putin's secret service filming Trump in compromising sexual activity during the 2013 Miss Universe contest in Moscow. His first memo was written on June 20, 2016, and he met for the first time with an FBI official on July 5, 2016.

It was also in June that CIA Director John Brennan was briefed by GCHQ Director Hannigan, on "evidence" compiled by his agency, of "suspicious" activity they had picked up on Russian activity with Trump. GCHQ is Britain's cyber security intelligence agency, which works directly with MI5 and MI6. Brennan then pulled together an inter-agency task force to investigate the British charges of Russian activity. Among those in the FBI unit which was part of this task force were the now-famous duo, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, whose extensive text messaging shows that they were engaged in creating the fake narrative of "Russian meddling and Trump collusion". One text spoke of developing the Russiagate narrative to either defeat Trump in November, or provide an "insurance policy" against him, if he won.

This incriminating text describes the meeting as taking place in "Andy's office", a reference to the now-fired Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, who told a Congressional hearing that there would have been no surveillance warrant issued by the FISA court in October 2016 against Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page, had it not been for the Steele dossier.

Nunes has sent a list of ten questions regarding how the Steele's dossier shaped the anti-Trump mobilization of Obama's intelligence agencies. Among those receiving the list of ten questions are James Comey, the former FBI director fired by Trump, Obama's Director of National Intelligence Clapper, Brennan and Victoria Nuland. They are given until March 2 to answer, or they will face subpoenas. What Nunes is looking for is answers as to when the Steele dossier was brought to their attention, by whom, what actions were taken in response to it, its role in the submission to the FISA Court, and whether President Obama was briefed on what the dossier contained. They lay the basis for possible indictments against those receiving the questions, and for Steele. Senators Grassley and Graham have already stated they believe charges should be filed against Steele, who has thus far been protected by Her Majesty's government, which has acted to prevent Steele from being brought before a court of law.

STEELE AND THE UKRAINIAN CONNECTION

But Steele's role in shaping U.S. policy predates the setting up of the Get Trump task force. Both Nunes and Grassley are investigating Steele's connections with the U.S. State Department, including with the notorious Nuland. They are looking into the role of Jonathan Winer, a former assistant Secretary of State who served as a long-time aide to former Secretary of State John Kerry. Winer befriended Steele in 2009, when they were collaborating on investigations of Russian "corruption".

Beginning in 2013, Steele drafted more than 100 memos on Ukraine and Russia, and passed these on to Winer, who was then a special assistant to Kerry on Libya, which had been destroyed in a Clinton-Obama regime change operation. Winer admitted, in an oped in the Washington Post on February 8, 2018, that he passed these on to Victoria Nuland, who asked that he continue to bring them to her. Note that these were written at the time of, and the immediate aftermath of the coup in Ukraine. The Washington PostDeep State conduit, James Rosen, wrote that Nuland found these reports "informative and sometimes helpful", and asked Winer to keep them coming.

When asked about the Steele memos on Ukraine in an interview with CBS on February 4—four days before Winer's oped was published—Nuland lied, denying that she had used the Steele memos.

But the Steele-Winer connection continued. In September 2016, Winer met with Steele, who presented to Winer his anti-Trump dossier. Winer drafted a two-page summary of the dossier, which he gave to Nuland. She told him to present this to Kerry. Later in the month, Winer met with Hillary Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal, who showed him another specious anti-Trump dossier, compiled by Clinton operative Cody Shearer. Winer then shared this who Steele, who then claimed it confirmed the charges he made in his dossier, though coming from different "sources."

Nunes and Grassley are both investigating the Steele-Winer-Nuland connection to see what this means as far as Obama administration direct involvement in running the Russiagate coup. Among those calling for a full criminal investigation into Brennan, Clapper, Comey and Hillary Clinton, which would reach Obama as well, is former Washington, D.C. U.S. Attorney Joseph DiGenova, who said it's very likely they could all be indicted.

YET BRITISH HITMAN MUELLER PROCEEDS!

As evidence piles up that the real collusion in the 2016 election was between British intelligence, the Clinton campaign, and Obama's intelligence team, Robert Mueller keeps going, indicting bit players on charges that have nothing to do with his mandate. Among the more ridiculous set of indictments was that against a Russian "troll farm", which will never be contested in court. However, it gave the media more ammunition to use against Trump.

The new indictments against Manafort come from squeezing his former partner, Rick Gates. Using a prosecutor's set of tools, Mueller went after Gates on his weak flank, the threat to him and his family of bankruptcy, were he to fight the charges. In entering his guilty plea, Gates told the court, "Despite my initial desire to vigorously defend myself, I have had a change of heart. The reality of how long this legal process will likely take, the cost, and the circus-like atmosphere of an anticipated trial are too much. I will better serve my family moving forward by exiting this process."

On the new charges against Manafort on money laundering, a well-informed insider said he's astonished at the lengths to which Mueller is going. He noted the irony that, when Mueller and Comey were FBI Directors, they never made a criminal case against leading banks which engaged in billions of dollars in money laundering, much of it proceeds from drug and arms-trafficking. One of the banks given a repeated pass was the notorious HSBC, which while being fined repeatedly for money laundering, never faced criminal prosecution, and continued to engage in money laundering! Among those arguing against criminal charges was the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, who said a criminal proceeding against a "systemically important" bank, such as HSBC, would risk "global financial disaster." Obama's Attorney General Holder shared this view, as he refused to file any criminal charges against "Too Big to Fail" banks.

Until his appointment by Obama as Director of the FBI, James Comey served on the Board of Directors of HSBC!

From this review of the significance of Ukraine in the whole Russiagate process, it becomes clear that the perversion of justice it represents is surpassed only by the danger which flows from the anti-Russia theme it serves. Unless there is an intervention to shut down this witch hunt, as there was to end the hysterical red-baiting charges of the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, the threshold for a possible nuclear confrontation with Russia is being dramatically reduced. It was Trump's campaign pledge to cooperate with Russia, rather than prepare for war, which is the reason for the Russiagate fraud.

Empire Spokesmen Launch Insane Warnings of Surprise Attacks from Russia and China

Feb. 22, 2018 (EIRNS)—The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has just issued a new report, “Coping with Surprise in Great Power Conflicts,” which insanely warns Americans to be on the alert for surprise attacks from Russia or China. And why should either of them stage a surprise attack on the United States, you ask? Because this study comes from the insane utopian school of the Rand Corporation, and the Andy Marshall who occupied a top position in the Pentagon from the Nixon years until 2015. This gang has contributed a particularly crack-brained current to neo-conservatism.

“The greatest vulnerability to strategic surprise today comes from the Russians and the Chinese because of the wide variety of tools available to them. Concerns abound that Russia will launch a surprise attack on the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. These NATO members are particularly vulnerable: militarily weak, geographically exposed, and internally divided by ethnic tensions. Russia frequently conducts nearby ‘snap’ exercises, which could be used as cover for attack preparations. Russia’s use of ‘gray zone’ operations could provide pre-invasion softening of the target.

“Concerns about China arise from the ‘Thucydides trap,’ the proposition that there is a high risk of war between a rising China and a status quo United States. Taiwan and the South China Sea are frequently cited as friction points. Although such a war looks irrational, it would not be unprecedented. China entered the Korean War against the United States in 1950 even though it had recently endured years of civil war and millions of casualties. It took on a nuclear power at a time when it had no nuclear weapons of its own and did this only five years after the United States had vanquished Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.”

If that convinces you that Russia or China are about to mount a surprise attack on the U.S., then there may be a job waiting for you among the computer brains of the Rand Corporation. But it’s another day’s work in puffing up the enemy image of China and Russia, combatting the New Silk Road that Americans are never supposed to hear about, and trying to undermine President Donald Trump.

As this positive motion advances, it is becoming increasingly intolerable that the witch hunt run against President Trump, by the London-directed imperial neocon/neolib forces, to prevent Trump from bringing the U.S. into full collaboration with the BRI, is allowed to continue. There is new evidence emerging which demonstrates that, as we have said from the beginning, these attacks have nothing to do with "Russian meddling," but are an effort by those "Deep State" manipulators to hold humanity hostage to their deadly wars, bailouts and murderous austerity measures.

      "Iran’s role and its direct command of its Houthi proxy in this matter constitutes a clear act of aggression that targets neighboring countries, and threatens peace and security in the region and globally,"

the Saudi-led coalition said in a widely reported statement.

"Therefore, the coalition’s command considers this a blatant act of military aggression by the Iranian regime, and could rise to be considered as an act of war against the kingdom of Saudi Arabia."

On a Saturday phone call, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Sultan briefed Pres. Trump. A White House read-out yesterday said that Trump agreed with the Saudi claims on the attack.

"A shot was just taken by Iran, in my opinion, at Saudi Arabia. And our system knocked it down," Trump said, referring to the U.S.-made Patriot missile batteries that the Saudis used.

The IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a unit of the Iranian military) has angrily rejected the Saudi-U.S. accusation. "The claim that the missile was delivered to Yemen by Iran is baseless," Major General Mohamed Ali Jafari, the commander of the IRGC, told reporters in Tehran Sunday. The allegations are unfounded because, basically, the Islamic Republic does not have access to Yemen to transfer such missiles, he added, reported Tasnim. "These missiles have been manufactured by the Yemenis and their military industries," the commander stressed.

The Saudi-led coalition has also responded to the missile attack by announcing that it will temporarily close all air, land, and sea ports to Yemen, supposedly to stem the flow of arms to Houthi rebels from Iran, though they claim that humanitarian work will be allowed to continue. Al Masdar News reports that Yemeni Minister of Transportation Zakaria al-Shami said today in Sanaa that the closure of the port of Hodeida, Yemen’s only deep water port, "would mean the death of the Yemeni people."

The Houthi missile strike, which a Houthi military spokesman said, "was in response to the massacres committed by the U.S.-Saudi coalition in Yemen," followed by only hours the resignation of Saad Hariri as prime minister of Lebanon. He spoke from Riyadh.

Most commentary reviewed by the news services indicate that Hariri is a Saudi asset and that his resignation was forced by the Saudis as part of a scheme to bring pressure on Hezbollah.

"The Saudis want to create a situation of political crisis, to break the political stability in Lebanon so that Hezbollah will be more busy in Lebanese internal politics than in Syria,"

Hebrew University scholar Yusri Hazran told the Jerusalem Post. "But I’m not sure this will be achieved." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during an appearance on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show on Nov. 5, clearly indicated that he is aligned with the Saudi view of Iran.

"I think this is a wake-up call for everyone...the attempt of Iran to conquer the Middle East, to dominate it and subjugate it. We should stop this Iranian takeover,"

Netanyahu said in reference to Hariri’s resignation.

In the middle of all of this, stands Defense Minister and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose weekend purge of at least eleven princes and other powerful figures in the Saudi hierarchy appears to be an effort to solidify his own power as the heir to the throne. Prince Mohammed led Saudi Arabia into the now two-and-one-half-year-old war in Yemen as well as the diplomatic/economic assault in Qatar.

Predictably, the reaction to these trends and the President expressing frustration over the limits to his authority over the 'non-partisan' Justice Department (including perhaps, the potential political blowback from deservedly firing Mueller or Rosenstein) has been more Democratic and deep state hysteria. Critics accuse Trump of seeking to use the DoJ to prosecute political adversaries, notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence of DoJ/FBI collusion during the Obama Administration to deep six any serious investigations into the Clintons and the corrupt foreign governments and oligarchs pay for play racket they ran through the Clinton Foundation. The fact that Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs alike contributed heavily to the Foundation at a time when they had major business interests before the U.S. government is not only indicative of the Democrats general #MuhRussia hypocrisy. It points out the partisanship inherent in labeling anything the previous Administration did irrelevant to the charge that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in support of Trump -- a claim affirmed in the 'non-partisan' January 2017 intelligence community assessment rushed out before the inauguration.

Groups like the German Marshall Fund (GMF)'s Hamilton68 project, which indirectly is supported by the German and American taxpayers, troll the President on Twitter and accuse him of undermining the credibility of the U.S. intelligence community and FBI. The reality, that these institutions have been rotting like dead fish for some time and that DNI James Clapper and DCI John Brennan grossly politicized the intel product out of their partisanship and personal animus against Trump, is being obfuscated (after leaving the ODNI, the 'non-partisan' former NSA directing perjurer Clapper joined a pressure group dedicated to pushing more #TrumpRussia agitprop fronted by Hollywood director Rob Reiner and actor Morgan Freeman). So too is the fact that the same law firm Perkins Coie which funneled Clinton money to Fusion GPS and thence to ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele for the dirty dossier, also funded Crowdstrike's findings that Russian and only state sponsored Russian hackers, not an insider (as the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity report promoted by this site and LaRouchePAC maintains), could be responsible for the breach of the DNC's servers.

Why the switcheroo in this week's AP story on 'Russian hacks of the DNC' from Crowdstrike to SecureWorks? Why does the article make no mention of Crowdstrike by name?

Why is the same law firm being tied to Fusion GPS and Crowdstrike so important? Because the FBI under Comey refused to subpoena the physical DNC servers, taking Crowdstrike and cyber security firms that they do business with's word for it that no forensics were necessary by the Bureau's own technicians.  Speaking on his Fox News evening show, host Tucker Carlson pointed the failure of the FBI to secure the DNC server out the other night, drawing jeers from Comey crony Benjamin Wittes and his Democrat deep state Lawfare crew that happens to include 'ex' GCHQ man Matt Tait (aka @PwnAlltheThings). Like Steele, Mr. Tait has not had to face questions as to why not one but two former employees of British intelligence have been so closely involved in assembling the dossier against Trump or attempts to 'prove' pro-Trump GOP operatives collaborated with Russian hackers to obtain the 33,000 deleted Hillary bathroom server emails (they didn't). 

Last but not least for the Russian Analyst's introduction to Harley's important summary of this week's facts, an Associated Press story intended to bolster Crowdstrike's reliability and the 'Russian hacking of DNC' claim at the heart of the January 2017 assessment did not mention Crowdstrike by name. Read the whole thing and see for yourself. Clearly the deep state and those who manipulate mainstream media on its behalf do not want Grassley and Nunes digging into FBI and intel agency support for Crowdstrike's partisan manipulation and quite possibly, their invention of the 'Russian hacker' Guccifer 2.0 persona to cover up what actually happened: a disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporter leaking the DNC's email trove to Wikileaks. Which brings us to this tweet by former Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, excerpted by Matt Drudge from her newly published book, about how she feared for her life after Seth Rich was gunned down in the wake of the Clintons rigging the DNC against populist/socialist challenger Sen. Bernie Sanders:

The following content is from LaRouchePub.com and our friend Harley Schlanger -- JWS

FBI, Obama, in the Crosshairs for British-Intelligence Lying Dossier Nov. 3, 2017 (EIRNS)—A drumbeat has begun, demanding an answer to the question: Did the FBI use the Hillary-funded, British intelligence-written, lying dossier as the basis for its FISA Court request to surveil Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016?

"I think they did," President Donald Trump told Boston radio host Howard Carr in an interview broadcast live from the White House yesterday, when asked just that question. "Because when [then-FBI Director James] Comey came up to see me ... he was showing me the dossier. That’s what he showed me. I think they did use it."

Trump was blunt: "If they did use it, it’s going to be serious problem for them. I think all of that will come out."

Nervous about where this is heading, mainstream press coup-advocates ranted about Trump’s "authoritarian" desires, when he complained in his interview with Carr and another with Radio WMAL’s Larry O’Connor the same day, that as President he is not supposed to interfere with the judiciary. Trump, in fact, asked a straightforward question: Why isn’t the Justice Department

"going after Hillary Clinton with her emails and with her dossier, and the kind of money ... is it possible that they paid $12.4 million for the dossier which is total phony, fake, fraud and how is it used?"

But,

"as a President, you’re not supposed to be involved in that process. But hopefully they are doing something and at some point, maybe we are going to all have it out,"

he said.

On Nov. 1, Florida Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis called upon the Trump administration to declassify those documents.

"What the American people deserve to know is whether the information compiled by Steele on the Democrats’ dime was used by the Obama administration to obtain approval to conduct surveillance against Trump associates,"

DeSantis said.

"The FBI has stonewalled producing these documents for months and their production shouldn’t be limited to closed-door viewing by a small number of members of Congress. The Trump administration should immediately declassify all the documents used to obtain surveillance warrants against Trump or his associates."

Likewise, numerous newspapers around the country published today a syndicated column by Washington Examiner columnist Byron York headlined: "After Trump Dossier Revelation, Focus on FBI Is Next." Wherein York asks:

"What did the FBI do with the dossier material? Did judges make surveillance decisions in the Trump-Russia investigation based in whole or in part on the dossier? To what degree is the ‘salacious and unverified dossier’ the source of what we think we know about allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign?"

Things are such that lawyer Hillary Clinton thought it wise to defend the dossier as "standard opposition research," nothing more, in a Wednesday night appearance on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. Preparing to throw her campaign lawyer under the bus, Hillary claimed that

"when Trump got the nomination of the Republican Party, the people doing it came to my campaign lawyer, and said, ‘would you like us to continue it?’ He said yes. He is an experienced lawyer. He knows what the law is. He knows what opposition research is."

And she lied that "this thing didn’t come out until after the election."

The scrambling by Democrat coup-champions had House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes chuckling on Wednesday. When the DOJ documents on the dossier were released (for Congressional eyes only) this week, Nunes’s investigators found when they showed up to review them that Rep. Adam Schiff—who had opposed the subpoena for their release as "irrelevant"—was already there, along with four staffers from other Dems! "That tells me that they are very, very nervous about this dossier, who paid for it,... and who or what was this used for by the FBI," Nunes told Fox News.

DESPERATE MUELLER UNVEILS BRITISH-FBI STING TO "GET TRUMP" by: Harley Schlanger

Nov. 3 -- On the eve of President Trump's historic trip to Asia, during which he will meet with China's President Xi Jinping, and possibly with Russian President Putin, special counsel and legal assassin Robert Mueller unsealed on October 31 the first indictments of Trump allies, former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates.  Mueller also announced that George Papadapoulos, a member of the President's foreign policy advisory committee, had entered a guilty plea for lying to FBI agents.  The anti-Trump media erupted in glee to these announcements, heralding them as the first steps to bringing to an end the Trump presidency.  While there was an air of satisfaction in the reporting on Manafort, there was special excitement over the Papadopoulos plea agreement, with some commentators hailing this as a "smoking gun", which proves allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

That the timing was in part determined by Trump's impending visit to Asia was made clear when CNN commentator David Gergen stated that, in the face of this legal attack, Trump should cancel his trip.  Gergen, who served under four Presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, is a leading voice for the ruling Trans-Atlantic establishment, which is frantically attempting to derail the effort to bring the U.S. into cooperation with China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as the New Silk Road. 

But a deeper look at Mueller's first charges reveals that not only is there no smoking gun in the Papadopoulos case, but that there is no connection between the charges against Manafort and Gates, and "Russiagate," which is what Mueller is supposed to be investigating.  What is more likely the case is that the money laundering and tax evasion charges, among the twelve counts against Manafort, represent an attempt to "flip" him, by threatening him with such a long prison sentence that he will be convinced to lie about Russia's role in electing Trump, and Trump's collusion with Russia.  This is a typical example of prosecutorial bullying tactics, employed in "white collar" criminal investigations, when evidence is lacking to prove the prosecutor's theory -- in this case, that Trump won the election with the aid of Russian intervention in the campaign, to favor him over Hillary Clinton.  The pressure on Mueller to produce something increased with the revelations of Clinton campaign funding the "dirty dossier" against Trump, produced by "former" British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, who was hired by Fusion GPS; and by the fact that his investigation has turned up no evidence whatsoever of Russian "hacking", or blackmailing of Trump, despite insistence by U.S. intelligence agencies that they "know" it happened.

WHO IS PAUL MANAFORT?

Manafort is a long-time political operative who helped secure the Republican nomination and subsequent election of Presidents Ford in 1976, Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and G.H.W. Bush in 1988.  His successful record, and his long-time collaboration with Roger Stone, his former partner, who was instrumental in developing the strategy behind Trump's primary victories, were the reasons he was brought into the Trump campaign in June 2016.  He became an unpaid campaign manager, and assured that the effort by the Bush-led neocon Republican establishment to deny Trump the nomination was defeated.  He left the campaign in August, when he became a target for unsubstantiated charges that he was part of the Russian-directed subversion of the U.S. election.

The targeting of Manafort is likely connected to the role he played as an adviser to former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych and his Party of the Regions.  He was hired by the party in 2010, and helped Yanukovych win the presidency that year.  Yanukovych was overthrown in the violent regime change coup in February 2014, orchestrated by British and U.S. intelligence services, with neocon Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland playing a key role.  The Ukraine coup, fully backed by the Obama administration, with armed neo-Nazi militia serving as the muscle, provided the excuse for U.S. sanctions against Russia, when President Putin moved to protect ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, who were being threatened by the Kiev regime, and pushed a referendum which led to Crimea being reincorporated into Russia.  During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly attacked the regime change tactics used by Obama and his Secretary of State Clinton, urging instead dialogue and cooperation with Putin. 

Trump's statements placed him in direct opposition to those establishment figures who opposed any challenge to the unipolar world order, under Anglo-American domination.  Trump warned that use of regime change coups and eastward extension of NATO posed a risk of nuclear war with Russia.   Hillary Clinton was supported by promoters of this world order, and repeatedly attacked Trump during the campaign for his calls for dialogue with Putin.

In a court memo filed on Manafort's indictment by Mueller's leading attack dog Andrew Weissman, Manafort is described as a "flight risk", and asks that he be held under house arrest, and that  bail be set at $10 million.  If found guilty, Manafort faces a 12.5 to 15.5 year sentence.  His former partner Roger Stone pointed out that Manafort's indictment "has nothing to do with Russiagate. The goal is to pressure him to bear false witness against the President."  He is treating Manafort "like a mafia drug kingpin."  Calling this "neo-McCarthyism," Stone said that "If you're not in favor of thermonuclear war with Russia over Syria, then you're a traitor to the U.S."  He added that he believes that Manafort "will fight these charges to the death, and will not 'flip' -- Mueller's plan will fail."   Even the rabidly anti-Trump {Washington Post} acknowledged in an October 30 preview of the indictments the weakness of Mueller's case against Manafort.  "Does this [Manafort's indictment]," the article asks, "prove that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia?  No."

WHO IS PAPADOPOULOS

One of the ironies in Mueller's timing in releasing the indictments of Manafort and Gates at the same time he announced the plea agreement with George Papadapoulos is that Manafort was one of several Trump aides who opposed the harebrained scheme being pushed by Papadapoulos.  A 30-year old with virtually no foreign policy experience and no prior connection to Trump, he was appointed during the campaign to the largely ceremonial "foreign policy advisory committee".  He immediately began sending a barrage of emails claiming that he could arrange a meeting between Trump and "high-level Russian officials."  He said he had a connection with a "Russian professor", who he said told him in a meeting in London on April 26, 2016 that the Russians had emails which had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.  He also claimed to have met, through the professor, a relative of Putin, possibly his niece.  In one of the emails he sent in April 2016 to Corey Lewandoski, who was then Trump's campaign manager, he wrote "Putin wants to host the Trump team when the time is right."   

It turns out that the professor is Joseph Mifsud, a somewhat shadowy figure who is not Russian, but Maltese, and who denies that he ever said he had access to "dirt" on Hillary, or connections to the Kremlin.  There was no "Putin niece" who turned up, and there was never a meeting set up by Papadapoulos for a member of Trump's team.  An additional anomaly in Papadapoulos' story is that prior to being brought onto the Trump committee as a "foreign policy expert", he had worked for some of the neocon institutions, such as the Hudson Institute, which favored the anti-Russian positions which Trump attacked during his campaign.  Suddenly, he presented himself as an advocate of Trump's anti-neocon policies!

An additional, highly-suspicious element of the Papadapoulus story is that he offered to connect Trump spokesman Boris Epshteyn with a "friend", Sergei Millian of the Russian American Business Association.  Millian has been identified as an "indirect" source for the Steele dossier, which is still being used by Mueller's team in preparing their case against the president, despite being discredited as a piece of salacious trash.

Papadapoulos was arrested by the FBI on July 22, 2017, and later pleaded guilty to "lying to the FBI."  What is not yet clear is whether he is merely a liar, or was set up to play precisely the role which Mueller has given him.  This news service is conducting an investigation into Papadapoulos, as the whole story smells like a joint British intelligence/FBI sting.  During the time he was on the Trump committee, he was based in London, and he reportedly attended only one of the monthly meetings.  He has two Masters degrees, from the University of London in 2010, and from the London School of Economics.  At the time he was pushing the Trump campaign to meet with representatives of the Russian government -- none of whom have been identified, and the Russians deny any contact with him -- he was the Director of the Centre for International Energy and Natural Resources Law and Security.

Former Reagan administration official David Stockman wrote a column ridiculing this case, "Mueller's Mugging of America: the Case of Baby George Papadapoulos".  He writes, "So, finding no contacts, no meetings, no 'collusion' or anything else validly related to Mueller's mandate, the latter's legal gunslingers came up with the usual default crime...to wit, Papadapoulos allegedly perjured himself....Anyone not involved in the campaign to reverse the 2016 election and remove the Donald from office should be forgiven for splitting a gut laughing when reading this hideous and utterly bogus case against Baby George Papadapoulos."