The President Is Not Trusted by the U.S. Military Institutions

June 23, 2010 (LPAC)—General Stanley McChrystal's Rolling Stone interview was no gaffe or flight forward. According to author Michael Hastings, he was given full access to the Afghan commander and his top aides, during a trip to Paris, that was greatly extended due to the volcanic ash disruption of air travel. At every moment, McChrystal confirmed that the discussions between the commander and his staff officers were "on the record," and McChrystal was fully aware that the article would be appearing in Rolling Stone magazine.

How, then, to explain the incident? According to several senior U.S. intelligence sources contacted today by EIR, there is a growing hatred of President Obama, within the U.S. military. The gap between the Commander-in-Chief and the armed forces is widening, as the perception spreads that the President is prepared to sandbag the military with blame for the Afghan failure, as a way to dodge responsibility, as he plunges into his 2012 reelection campaign, beginning this summer. Within the ranks of the U.S. Army, a disenchantment with the much-heralded counterinsurgency doctrine, is also setting in, as it becomes more and more clear that the Afghan war is tough going. The fact that the military has lost confidence in the President is another big headache for Obama and his Chicago Boys and Girls.

Late breaking: Last night, the Daily Telegraph reported from Washington that Gen. McChrystal has tendered his resignation, but it is not certain that President Obama will accept it. The President and McChrystal are to meet sometime on Wednesday at the White House. According to Tony Cordesman, a leading military analyst at CSIS, the President is going to be hard pressed to find a replacement for McChrystal, who could do any better, given the fiasco in Afghanistan.

As Lyndon LaRouche emphasized in discussions with colleagues last night, the military revolt is yet another indication that the Obama Presidency is on the ropes and Obama is finished. The British Petroleum disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is decisive in the fall of Obama, but a clear understanding can only come from a review of LaRouche's own April 11, 2009 webcast, in which he diagnosed Obama's narcissist complex, equating Obama with Emperor Nero.

Obama's Opium War

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BP Was Aware of Deepwater Horizon Problems in February

June 23, 2010 (LPAC)—Filings at MMS (Minerals Management Services, a branch of the U.S. Interior Dept.) show that BP was aware of problems with well cracks as early as February. The first crack took 10 days and three different slurries pumped into the well before it sealed. This is highly unusual, since most cracks are sealed in a matter of hours, according to an engineer quoted by Bloomberg News. Left unchecked, leaks can allow buildup of explosive methane gas, but cement and "mud" used to fill them is expensive, and BP was all about the cash flow. "Once they realized they had oil down there, all the decisions they made were designed to get that oil at the lowest cost," said Peter Galvin of the Center for Biological Diversity. Bloomberg even notes that (Greenie punching bag) Exxon Mobil actually abandoned a Gulf well-drilling project in 2006 because of similar instabilities.

In hearings last week, Henry Waxman scored Tony Hayward, saying they could find no evidence that he (along with COO Doug Suttles and exploration chief Andy Inglis) was in any way aware of "the tremendous risk BP was taking" in this experimental well.

Obama Bows to the Queen To Save BP and Tear Up The Constitution

June 23, 2010 (LPAC)—According to senior U.S. intelligence sources, President Barack Obama's so-called "get tough on BP" posture was nothing but political cover, to conceal the fact that he had totally capitulated to pressure from London to bail out BP, as one of the anchors of the entire British Crown. According to one source, a gathering of top City of London oligarchs reached a unanimous consensus that BP had to be saved, at all costs. A delegation went to Prime Minister David Cameron, and assigned him to secure Obama's pledge to join the "save BP" bandwagon. And that is exactly what happened.

* On June 10, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, and then PM Cameron met with BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, and worked out the details of Cameron's pitch to Obama.

* On June 12, Cameron and Obama had a 30-minute phone conversation, in which Obama agreed that the U.S. would not take any action that could jeopardize the survival of the company. Obama also invited Cameron to come to Washington on July 20.

* On June 16, Obama had a White House meeting with top BP executives, including Svanberg. Coming out of the meeting, Obama announced the creation of a $20 billion fund, to be paid by BP, to compensate victims of the explosion and oil spill. While Obama talked tough about this not being a "cap" on what BP would pay out, the actual nature of the deal was exactly that. The President named White House attorney Ken Feinberg to administer the BP fund, and within days, Feinberg made clear that payouts would require recipients signing waivers against any future law suits. Feinberg had administered the 911 compensation fund, and had imposed the same rules in that case, which has subsequently resulted in victims and survivors of the 911 attack being horribly short-changed. At the time of the 911 fund, the argument had been made that the insurance industry would go under, if victims were fully compensated. In this case, the beneficiary of the defacto cap will be the Crown Jewel, BP.

Another U.S. intelligence source emphasized that the BP action by Obama may be the greatest violation, yet, of the U.S. Constitution, in the name of the unitary executive. Obama set up the BP fund, in a private White House deal with top BP executives, without consulting Congress or the courts. The President's administrator, Feinberg, has made a unilateral decision that victims of the BP spill collecting from the fund will have to give up their right to sue. There is no legislative or judiciary approval for this action. The President cut a private deal with the British Crown, and the net effect is that the American people are going to be Royally screwed!

BP Disaster Day 63: Oil Flow to Hit Atlantic on Day 80

June 22, 2010 (LPAC)— A computer-generated oil flow map from the National Center for Atmospheric Research shows the oil slick from the BP-caused disaster expanding in the Gulf of Mexico and extending down the Florida Gulf Coast throughout the month.

According to their model, on or about day 80, or whenever the oil finally hits the southern tip of the state, it is picked up by the swift ocean currents, which speed it up the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S., in a thin band maybe 100 miles offshore, reaching Virginia Beach within a week. From there, the leading edge of the oil heads east, where it soon (within another week) swirls into an immense pool in the North Atlantic, while at the same time the near-shore stream slowly increases in density and approaches the shores of the U.S. states of Georgia, South and North Carolina.

 

To Restore Glass Steagall: Dump Barney Frank Now!

Jeffrey Steinberg

June 21—On Sunday, June 13, 2010, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) lied through his teeth, in response to a direct challenge from Rachel Brown, the LaRouche Democrat who is challenging him for the party's Congressional nomination in the upcoming September Massachusetts primaries. Brown has focused her campaign on the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act, the FDR-era law that created a wall of separation between the commercial and investment banks and insurance companies. Brown has also forcefully called for the impeachment of President Barack Obama, and for a vast expansion of the NASA manned space program, which President Obama has shut down.

Appearing together before the Brookline Democratic Club, Brown accused Frank of being one of the engineers of the destruction of Glass-Steagall, and one of Wall Street and London's key defenders on Capitol Hill.

In response to Brown, Barney lost his cool, and lied, repeatedly. I voted against the repeal of Glass-Steagall, Barney pleaded, and lied that the bill now working its way through House-Senate conference would be the strongest banking reform bill since the New Deal. Barney is going to eat those words!

About the only true thing that Barney said was that he did, indeed, vote against the Gramm, Leach, Bliley bill, the 1999 Financial Services Modernization act that repealed Glass-Steagall—but only after the House and Senate had caved in to Wall Street pressure, and passage was absolutely assured.

In fact, the House version of the Glass-Steagall repeal passed on July 20, 1999 without objection, and without any record of where individual Members of the House stood. The controversy between the House and Senate versions centered on the Community Reinvestment Act, which required banks to provide loans and banking services in low-income communities—not on the underlying issue of the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

And ever since the Nov. 4, 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall, Barney Frank has been a powerful and consistent advocate of Wall Street interests—against the interests of the vast majority of Americans.

* In 2007, Frank, as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, boasted that he had played a central role in blocking any consideration of the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act (HBPA), the emergency law proposed by Lyndon LaRouche, and endorsed by hundreds of city councils, state legislatures and leading politicians and labor leaders throughout the United States, that would have put an indefinite freeze on home foreclosures, and would have placed the banking system under bankruptcy protection, under revived Glass-Steagall standards.

* In the still-ongoing deliberations on a banking reform bill, Frank blocked any House consideration of Glass-Steagall, by preventing two House bills, by Reps. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and John Dingell (D-Mich.) from coming up for debate and vote. Both bills were referred to Frank's Financial Services Committee, and Frank tossed them in the trash can. He also blocked the Hinchey bill from being added to the House version of financial reform as an amendment.

* Now, Frank has further lined up with Wall Street, in the effort to remove the amendment, forcing banks to divest their derivatives trading desks, that was incorporated into the Senate bill, under the sponsorship of Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee. The Lincoln amendment, now Title 7 of the Dodd bill, is under massive attack from Wall Street's super-banks, and Barney has made clear which side of the barricade he is on.

First, on May 21, following a meeting at the White House, Frank publicly trashed the Lincoln amendment, declaring that it went "too far," and immediately, stock prices for Goldman Sachs and other mega-banks that would be hard hit by the derivatives ban, shot up.

When a group of New York Congressmen, led by Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), sent a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Rep. Frank and Rep. Colin Peterson, on June 14, demanding that the Lincoln amendment be killed, Barney Frank boasted that he had encouraged the New Yorkers to keep pressing for its removal, in a June 15 interview with Huffington Post: "It's a legitimate concern of theirs, and I told them they should keep arguing."

Ackerman had flagrantly threatened to defeat the bill if the Lincoln provisions remained intact, boasting that the entire 26 Member New York delegation would defend Wall Street at all costs. "Wall Street is one of our umbilical cords, it's the oxygen," he told Huffington Post.

The darker secret that Barney Frank desperately wishes to avoid, particularly as the primary election campaign heats up, is that he has been, for the entire time he has served in the U.S. House of Representatives (since Jan. 1981), Alan Greenspan's boy toy.

A serious review of the 15-year Wall Street and City of London drive to kill Glass-Steagall tells the story that Barney is desperate to hide.

The True Story of The Bretton Woods

- JP Morgan Declares War -

 

In December 1984, JP Morgan, the most British of all the Wall Street investment houses, circulated an internal pamphlet, prepared by a team of inhouse economists, led by William C. Dudley. The pamphlet, "Rethinking Glass Steagall," was a clarion call for a fullscale war to break the Glass-Steagall Act, and return to the pre-FDR era of unbridled financier cartelization. At the time, Alan Greenspan was a JP Morgan director, and he would go on to be the single most important player in the takedown of Glass-Steagall.

"Rethinking Glass Steagall" was subtitled "The case for allowing bank holding company subsidiaries to underwrite and deal in corporate securities." The report summary was explicit: "Fundamental changes in our economy, important shifts in the demand for financial services, and the resulting competition among different classes of financial institutions in recent years have produced what is aptly termed a revolution in the financial services market. In this environment, competitive inequalities inherent in the rigid segmentation of the financial services industry provide another compelling reason to rethink Glass-Steagall.

"This study analyzes the major issues raised by proposals to allow bank holding company subsidiaries to underwrite and deal in corporate debt and equity securities. It first examines the arguments most commonly made to justify preservation of artificial barriers to competition imposed by Glass-Steagall and finds these arguments have little merit."

The conclusions reached by JP Morgan were no surprise: "The study concludes, and Morgan believes, that there is no valid reason to preserve the securities industry's protected position in capital markets." In other words, Glass-Steagall had to go.

- Morgan's Greenspan Takes Charge of the Fed -

 

Three years after "Morgan" concluded that Glass-Steagall had to be crushed, Alan Greenspan took over the Federal Reserve. In short order, Greenspan began to implement the takedown of Glass-Steagall, precisely as it was spelled out in the Morgan blueprint.

One of the tools that Greenspan employed, in illegally destroying Glass-Steagall years before the formal 1999 repeal, was the discretionary authority vested in the Fed Chairman, in a loophole, written into the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956. The bill was intended to strengthen regulation of bank holding companies, and restrict interstate banking. However, the added powers vested in the Federal Reserve Board were abused by Greenspan, to allow banks to engage in securities trading.

Prior to Greenspan's arrival at the Fed, banks were only allowed to generate five percent of their earnings from non-commercial banking activities. Through the early 1990s, according to economic historian Charles Geisst, among others, Greenspan steadily boosted the percentage, to the point that, by 1996, banks were allowed to generate 25 percent of their earnings by investment banking.

Still, however, under Glass-Steagall, commercial banks were barred from owning brokerage houses or insurance companies, despite the fact that they were allowed now to engage in significant amounts of securities marketing.

Those barriers were smashed, by Greenspan, in 1988, when he granted a waiver to Travelers Insurance Company, then headed by Sanford Weill, to buy Citibank. Travelers owned Salomon Smith Barney, a large investment bank. The Travelers-Citibank merger, thus, for the first time since the passage of Glass-Steagall, allowed a single bank holding company to own a commercial bank, an insurance company and an investment bank.

It was a total violation of the law, but Greenspan, in his zeal to kill Glass-Steagall, granted Travelers and Citibank a two-year waiver. In that two year period, Weill and company would either be forced to break up the mega-bank that had just been created—or repeal Glass-Steagall once and for all.

In the run-up to the Travelers-Citibank merger, Weill had conferred directly with Greenspan and other at the Fed, and had been assured that his efforts were totally in line with their own commitment to smash Glass-Steagall.

Weill launched a massive lobbying campaign, targeting Congress to repeal Glass-Steagall before the time ran out on the waiver. Citibank alone spent $100 million in lobbying the Congress, and other major Wall Street banks, led by JP Morgan, joined the effort.

In early 1999, both the House and the Senate introduced versions of financial reform legislation that would kill Glass-Steagall. All of the arguments, presented from the floor of the Congress, and in the backroom sessions with Wall Street lobbyists, armed with massive amounts of cash, came directly from the 1984 JP Morgan pamphlet. Greenspan had been an avid participant in the preparation of that document, and, as a Morgan director, had given his personal impremature. As Geisst told a PBS-TV Frontline interviewer several years ago, without Alan Greenspan and his role at the Fed, the repeal of Glass-Steagall would never have taken place in 1999.

The 1999 Gramm Leach Bliley Act was bought and paid for by Sandy Weill, JP Morgan, and the other big Wall Street looters. On the Hill, as the bill pushed through conference for a final vote on Nov. 4, 1999, it was commonly referred to as "the Citi-Travelers bill," or, even more personally, as "Sandy's bill."

- The Impeachment Factor -

 

Without Alan Greenspan's maneuverings at the Fed, Glass-Steagall could still be the law of the land today. Without the impeachment drive against President Bill Clinton, the Gramm Leach Bliley bill would have potentially gone down with the stroke of a Presidential veto pen.

It cannot be underestimated how much the impeachment of President Bill Clinton was tied to the defeat of Glass-Steagall. The targeting of Clinton was strategic, it came directly from London and London's Wall Street allies, and it had everything to do with the drive to repeal Glass-Steagall.

Beginning with the so-called Asia financial crisis of 1997, and extending through the Aug. 1998 Russian default on their GKO government bonds, triggering the near collapse of the Longterm Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund, President Clinton, along with his Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, came to realize that the unregulated flows of shortterm capital, brought on by the wave of deregulation, that began in the mid-1970s, shortly after the abolishing of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system, was reckless and destructive, and could bring about a systemic collapse. Rubin, as Treasury Secretary, also warned, sharply against the "moral hazard" of bailing out financial institutions that were "too big to fail." His famous diktat, "not one nickel to bail out the banks," resounded on Wall Street at the time.

In Jan. 1997, Lyndon LaRouche launched an international campaign for the convening of a New Bretton Woods conference, to reconstitute a global fixed exchange rate system, and to eliminate the very speculative capital flows that were about to gut the economies of such nation-states as Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, Russia and Brazil, over the course of the next two years.

While it would be an exaggeration to say that Clinton and Rubin fully embraced LaRouche's plan for a return to FDR's Bretton Woods, there is no question that the impact of LaRouche's forecasts and his proposal for a revival of Roosevelt's anti-colonial policies of global economic development, were felt strongly within the Clinton inner circles.

Beginning in early 1998, Clinton and Rubin launched an international campaign to formulate a "new global financial architecture." A combination of G-7 advanced sector and G-15 emerging economy nations formed the G-22, to study alternatives to the current, unregulated global system. Representatives of the 22 nations met in Washington, D.C. in the Spring of 1998, and established a series of ongoing working groups, to come up with plans for a new, more regulated international financial system.

These moves by Clinton and Rubin stood in stark opposition to the Greenspan-JP Morgan-Sandy Weill drive to bust up the last vestiges of restrictive bank regulation in the U.S.A.

When, in Sept. 1998, President Clinton traveled to New York City, to deliver a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations, pressing for a "new global financial architecture" with far greater regulation and restriction of shortterm capital flows, all hell broke loose. Clinton was targeted for impeachment. Wall Street Democrats, led by Vice President Al Gore and Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Ct.), joined with Britain's Daily Telegraph propaganda mill, to press for Clinton's resignation. The House of Representatives voted a bill of impeachment.

The issue was never the Monica Lewinsky affair. The issue was President Clinton's publicly announced commitment to overhaul the global financial system, to the detriment of speculators.

And the punishment was swift. From the time that President Clinton delivered his statement of intent to overhaul the global financial architecture at the CFR in late September, to the time that the House of Representatives voted for his impeachment, took less than 90 days. The City of London's demands for Clinton's scalp over his threat to reregulate the global financial system—in cooperation with developing sector countries that had been viciously looted by speculators—was delivered.

There was never a serious question about the outcome of the impeachment trial of President Clinton in the U.S. Senate. The Democratic majority was never about to vote up the articles of impeachment, despite the Gore-Lieberman efforts to seize the Oval Office. On Feb. 12, 1999, the Senate acquitted Clinton.

But the die had already been cast, and the drive for the repeal of Glass-Steagall benefited enormously from the Clinton impeachment distraction, which killed off any efforts at the new global financial architecture. On May 12, 1999, Robert Rubin resigned as Treasury Secretary, effective July 1 of that year. His replacement, Larry Summers, was fanatically committed to "Sandy's law," repealing Glass-Steagall. On Nov. 4, 1999, both the House and the Senate passed the Glass-Steagall repeal. A broken and distracted President Clinton signed it into law days later.

 

 

 

 

Dialogue: The Takedown of Glass-Steagall

http://www.larouchepac.com/lpactv?nid=14906

Puppet Obama Bows to Phony Tony Blair-Bibi Deal on Gaza

June 21, 2010 (LPAC)—President Obama will dance to Tony Blair's tune on July 6, when he meets Bibi Netanyahu in the Oval Office to bless the so-called easing of the blockade of Gaza that was negotiated by Blair in Israel on June 18. Netanyahu came out of a meeting of his security cabinet on June 20 to announce: "Israel seeks to keep out of Gaza weapons and material that Hamas uses to prepare and carry out terror and rocket attacks toward Israel and its civilians.... All other goods will be allowed into Gaza," reported Ha'aretz.

But there is no date for the publication of this "narrow" list of prohibited items, until which time the official blockade of all goods continues. And on the same day as Bibi's lying announcement, the government of Germany denounced Israel's denial of entry into Gaza of Dirk Niebel, the German Minister of Economic Cooperation And Development.

The White House, however, immediately kissed the asses of Blair and Netanyahu, in a statement that praised the "easing" of the blockade and threatened those who are organizing delivery of aid to Gaza. The White House ordered, "all those wishing to deliver goods to do so through established [Netanyahu and IDF] channels so that their cargo can be inspected and transferred via land crossings into Gaza." The White House warned these humanitarian aid sources to "act responsibly" and avoid "unecessary confrontations." Obama is still defending the Israeli murders of May 31 in the attack on the Gaza aid flotilla, and the Israeli press is gloating over Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs' Sunday statement that the U.S. supports "Israel's right to self-defense," and that the U.S. is committed to continue to "prevent the illicit trafficking of arms and ammunition into Gaza." Blair himself virtually announced that Israel would carry out more murders like the attack on the Mavi Marmara, in saying that all goods sent by sea to Gaza would be diverted, by force, to the Israeli port of Ashdod. Netanyahu asserted, as always, that any material could be dubbed "dual use" and banned.

The elected Hamas government in Gaza called the so-called policy change "a joke," and neighboring Jordan, which has diplomatic relations with Israel, said the move is only a "cosmetic" measure.

The British and Obama are the only allies that the fascist Netanyahu government has to give cover for its perpetual war policy. Inside Israel, there is a move afoot to dump Bibi and his right-wing fanatics. Israeli sources report that the failed Kadima no-confidence vote against Netanyahu in the Knesset earlier this month was not an isolated event. Rather, it is the opening shot of a drive—which includes some elements of the Likud and the military establishment—to dump the Likud-led coalition and install a Kadima government that would both be free of the radical right-wing and settler parties, as well as the religious parties. No Israeli government coalition that includes the religious parties is capable of a peace agreement with the Palestinians, these Israeli sources conclude.

London Connections to Kyrgyz Riots

June 21, 2010 (LPAC)—According to available reports, the deposed Kyrgyz President, Kurmanbek Bakiev's son, Maxim Bakiev, was entirely responsible for initiating recent ethnic riots in southern Kyrgyzstan that took reportedly 2,000 lives.

Over the years, under the tutelage of his father, Maxim Bakiev became the most important controller of opium/heroin produced aplenty on the Kyrgyz side of the fertile Ferghana Valley, and the Afghan drugs that run through Kyrgyzstan into Russia. The drug-generated money power had allowed Maxim Bakiev to link up with bankers and investors in the netherworld.

One such beneficiary of Maxim Bakiev's drug money is a Latvian banker, Valerie Belakon, who is allegedly using Bakiev's drug money to buy a British soccer club, Blackpool. Most of the British soccer clubs depend on drug money to pay the high-priced players.

Sources point out that Maxim Bakiev, who came over to Britain seeking asylum and has since been "arrested" by the British Border Forces, may have played himself into a British plan to separate the southern part, which will then be under control of London. Since the Ferghana Valley, and the southern part of Kyrgyzstan, in particular, produce a lot of drugs, Britain and George Soros had been looking longingly to gain control of this area. However, the violence unleashed in Osh, Jala-Abad, and elsewhere in southern Kyrgyzstan, could bring the well-entrenched Islamic terrorists, led by the British-controlled Hizb ut-Tahrir, to power in Bishkek in the forseeable future.

NPR Poll Shows Total Rejection of Obama, Scares Democrats

June 21, 2010 (LPAC)—A new poll for National Public Radio, of 70 "competitive" Congressional districts around the country, shows dreadful results for Barack Obama and increasingly chilling prospects for House Democrats in November.

The June 7-10 poll (by Republican pollster Glen Bolger and Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg) surveyed 30 "highly competitive" districts around the country held by House Democrats, 30 "competitive but not toss-up" Democrat-held districts, and 10 "competitive" GOP-held districts. Across the board, generic party preference had shifted to the GOP for the first time in nearly 20 years.

The voters' view of Obama was decidedly negative: 53% of all the voters disapproved of his job performance, while 43% approved. In the Democratic districts alone it was disastrous: 54% disapproval against 40% approval; and 57% in those Democratic districts blamed Obama's economic policies for producing record deficits while failing to slow job loss.

"It's very problematic for the president to have a 40% approval rating in these 60 Democratic districts," said Bolger. "When you look at history, when the president is below 50% nationally, his party tends to lose more than 40 seats" (i.e., enough for Democrats to lose the House).

Oil Blowout Means Obama Administration is Now Finished

June 20, 2010 (LPAC)—An ominous report on the Gulf of Mexico oil blowout, which Lyndon LaRouche commented "has the hallmarks of accuracy," has been posted on the oil geologists' and engineers' blog, "The Oil Drum," reproduced on "Science Blogs" with the comment, "very knowledgeable," and finally posted on Mother Jones' website under the headline, "Is the BP Gusher Unstoppable?" The implications of this report, also echoed in a BP internal engineers' report discovered on Sunday by Rep. Edward Markey's committee, are, LaRouche emphasized, that the Obama Administration is now finished, for what it has done, and for what it has not done in this critical matter.

LaRouche has said — most recently in a June 16 public statement — that the President should have been making preparations for the use of peaceful nuclear explosions (PNE) to stop the gusher if necessary, including getting an emergency exception to the Test Ban Treaty cleared with its signator nations. The engineers posting on "The Oil Drum" do not discuss using PNEs. But they chillingly forecast that everything else will fail because the substrate under the broken wellhead is filling with leaks and breaking up, and the blowout is "evolving" toward a monster geyser of 150-200,000 barrels a day which will cover the Gulf and soon the Atlantic, reaching the shores of Europe and Africa. And, they comment, both BP and the U.S. government know this, as shown by the shifts in BP's strategies in attempting to contain the oil.

In one section of their report, the engineers note that when BP abruptly abandoned its "Top Kill" strategy, "To those of us outside the real inside loop, yet still fairly knowledgeable, this was a major confirmation of what many feared. That the system below the sea floor has serious failures of varying magnitude in the complicated chain, and it is breaking down and it will continue to.... It means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot ... the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop [blowout preventer] ... the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it. When you open up the nozzle? ... it doesn't leak so bad; you close the nozzle?... it leaks real bad; same dynamics. It is why they sawed the riser off.... Contrary to what most of us would think as logical to stop the oil mess, actually opening up the gushing well and making it gush more, became the direction BP took after confirming that there was a leak. In fact, if you note their actions, that should become clear. They have shifted from stopping or restricting the gusher to opening it up and catching it. This only makes sense if they want to relieve pressure at the leaks hidden down below the seabed ... and that sort of leak is one of the most dangerous and potentially damaging kinds of leak there could be. It is also inaccessible...."

Next steps, they warn, with continuing erosion of the ocean floor sand, stone, and well casing by rushing oil and gas, can include the collapse — falling over — of the five-story, 400-ton blowout preventer and the pumping rig sitting next to it on the sea bed. And eventually, the collapse of the subsurface area beneath them, which has the well casing — undoubtedly leaking from numerous places — driven down through it. The blowout can evolve into a monster blowing up 150-200,000 barrels a day, more than any producing oil/gas well in North America.

The BP document released yesterday by Representative Markey, called a "worst case," refers to this obliquely but clearly by stating that as much as 100,000 barrels per day could leak into the ocean "if the blowout preventer and wellhead were removed," a higher worst-case scenario than previously reported. Rather than being "removed," the "outside" engineers are warning, these structures are becoming unstable and can and will collapse.

The staff of "The Oil Drum" blog make the comment, "Were the US government and BP more forthcoming with information and details, the situation would not be giving rise to so much speculation about what is actually going on in the Gulf. This should be run more like Mission Control at NASA — transparency, now!" The staff of "Science Blogs" simply say that they are scared by the "seemingly very knowledgeable" posting.

But LaRouche said that the engineers' report, "with the hallmarks of accuracy," means first of all that "you have to be prepared to use PNEs — and we're not, because Obama has done nothing about it." And secondly, "The fundamental issue here is the United States' and Americans' perception of the British, and what they are doing to us, and that they know they're doing it to us. And the President is refusing to face reality. This 'scare' report is the truth; the 'worst case' is going to happen. And the President will not be forgiven."

On Friday, June 18, Obama publicly committed himself to the British line that "90% or more" of the blowout will be controlled by BP "within days and weeks." He has failed to mobilize all national and available international resources for keeping the oil away from Gulf Coast shores. And he has failed to act in any way to prepare for the "worst case," in which only PNEs can work.

"There will be a shocking exposure of the man — and he's not a good man," LaRouche said. "The Obama Administration is now finished."

Change is a 'comin' - International Webcast

June 20, 2010 (LPAC)--In the six weeks since Lyndon LaRouche's last internatinal webcast on May 8, the world has entered into a new phase of international collapse, and of opportunity for dramatic positive change. Thus, when he takes the webcast stage again on June 26, at 1 pm Eastern time, LaRouche will address that changed situation, and how U.S. patriots, and international leaders, must act immediately to bring the world out of its current breakdown crisis. For it's clear: Change is coming, but the action or inaction of U.S. patriots will determine what kind of change it is.

If the leadership of the mass strike process which is accelerating in the United States takes up the program put forward by LaRouche PAC--ramming through the restoration of Glass-Steagall principle as the first step in global reconstruction, and forcing Obama out of office by constitutional means--the U.S. will be in a position to lead the world out of its current collapse into a New Dark Age. Western Europe, China, Russia, and India will all move to join the U.S. in a process of world reconstruction, based on a fixed-exchange rate financial arrangement, and long-term credits for infrastructure development.

On the other hand, if the world situation is left in the hands of the corrupt, British-controlled political class--starting with President Obama, and extending through much of the U.S. Congress, and the leadership of European governments--a new steep financial collapse, and acceleration of the economic breakdown crisis, will be virtually assured. That disaster will be all the worse, given the horrors carried out by the British imperial oil company, BP, in the Gulf of Mexico.

LaRouche's webcast will lay out the choice. Tune in at 1 pm eastern on www.larouchepac.com, or call 1-800-929-7566 to find out how to attend a showing in your area.