Plane Crash In Russia Wipes Out Polish Government

April 11, 2010 (LPAC)—Early Saturday morning, a Polish government plane, carrying President Lech Kaczynski and a large delegation of top government and military officials, crashed near Smolensk, Russia, killing all 97 people on board. Among those killed was the President, his wife, the head of the national security office, two other presidential aides, the national bank president, the deputy parliamentary speaker, the army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, the heads of the air and land forces, and several members of parliament and the Polish clergy. The group was traveling to a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Forest massacre, in which 22,000 Polish officers were killed by the Soviet NKVD. In what was hailed as an important reconciliation gesture, Russian Prime Minister Putin attended an official commemoration, along with the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, earlier in the week. The first Russian leader to ever attend the annual commemoration, Putin declared, "We bow our heads to those who bravely met death here." And Russian television aired a famous Polish documentary film, Katyn, this week in another Russian gesture.

By all accounts, including from Russian air traffic control officials, the Tu-154 aircraft was told to abort the landing at Smolensk, and instead land in either Minsk, Belarus, or Moscow, due to severe fog in the area. However, the pilot chose to ignore the warnings and attempt the landing. The plane crashed through forests and broke into pieces. Prime Minister Putin announced he was taking personal charge of the investigation, and he made arrangements to meet his Polish counterpart Tusk at the crash site later in the day on Saturday.

Russian President Medvedev responded quickly to the crash, posting statements in both English and Polish on the presidential website, and placing calls to top Polish officials, including Prime Minister Tusk.

``Yes, Virginia, You Can Eradicate the Queen's Opium'': The Case of Myanmar

April 10 (LPAC)—The government of Myanmar, which is under sanctions by the United States since 1988, has been conducting a massive—and highly successful—effort to eradicate opium. According to the UN Office of Drug Control's 2009 World Drug Report, Myanmar has reduced opium production from 105,000 hectares in 2001 to 28,500 hectares in 2008. During the same time, the opium production has gone from 1,097 metric tons in 2001 (the highest level ever produced in Myanmar) to 410 metric tons or less per year in 2005-8.

One main reason for the success is recognizing that the fight against the opium is the fight against the British Empire. Look at the Preface from Myanmar's 2008 report, "Endeavors of Myanmar for Elimination of Narcotic Drugs":

"If we are to talk about narcotic drugs, we cannot exclude [that] opium, the major source of sedative drugs (opiates), was not cultivated and produced in Myanmar until the 19th century, when the whole of Myanmar was annexed by the British. The British government permitted opium-poppy to be cultivated legally in the Shan State and in the mountainous regions of the Kachin State. [It] Allowed the opening of opium dens under liscence and smoking of opium after being registered. The British government itself transported and traded opium and revenue was collective from the opium business. Starting from that time, the evil habit of cultivating opium poppy and smoking of opium took root."

The Preface further explains that after Myanmar got independence in 1948, the evil habit of cultivating poppy continued in mountainous areas where "the British had practiced 'Divide and Rule' policy" and encouraged insurgency and separatism among the different nationalities within Myanmar. For decades the opium production has been the greatest in the Shan and Kachin states of Myanmar, where the British developed it.

According to well-informed experts, since 2000, the Myanmar government has taken a top down approach to not only eradicate opium fields, largely through long term crop substitution, but to prioritize the economic and social development of the outlying areas, to unify the country and end the backwardness brought by colonialism.

In 2000, a 15 year plan was developed to eliminate all opium production by 2014. Farmers began to turn in their opium seed on a mass scale, and at the same time received money, substitute seed, and in some cases, guaranteed markets for the replacement crops. But even more important the Myanmar government attempted to immediately bring in three things to these outlying areas: electricity, roads, and literacy through building of schools to bring the country out of poverty. It has been a huge rural electrification project — of the type carried out by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s.

International cooperation has been key to success, especially with neighbors, China and Thailand; and Myanmar has Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) on fighting drugs with China, Thailand, India and Russia. "The scourge of narcotics drugs is threatening the whole world," says the Myanmar government report, and "because of narcotic drugs, the prestige and human resources of a country can be ruined."

The fight is not finished. Warlords in the opium areas had to put down their weapons, and end cultivation of opium as part of the effort to unify the country, but in some areas, eradication has not been carried out. Meanwhile, a new problem—amphetamine production and traffic has emerged. One knowledgeable source pointed out amphetamine labs are even harder to fight—they are small, mobile, and can be put anywhere.

LaRouche: This Idiot Would Walk Right Into His Own Assassination!

Apr 9, 2010 (LPAC)—When two former US Ambassadors were recently briefed on what LaRouche has said about the British intent to assassinate Obama, each of them independently responded to the effect that: "Well, the perfect place would be the Washington Nuclear Security Summit next Monday and Tuesday, Apr 12-13. This is the biggest imaginable security threat; it's a huge security matter. It's the largest gathering of heads of state since the founding of the United Nations."

"It would be a nice terrorist impact, wouldn't it?", Lyndon LaRouche responded. "It would lead to a dictatorship.

The summit will be held in the Washington Convention Center, and Washington will be largely shut down for the event.

The diplomats said that there's no reason for this summit; it's just a big show. A few meaningful things might happen there, but they'll be hidden in the midst of the extravaganza. The sole reason for this summit, is just because Obama wants a big show. And Obama himself personally invited these 50-60 heads of state to the summit.

LaRouche said, "That's typical of the way the British would program him for a setup. It's exactly the way they would do it!"

LaRouche emphasized, "The point is, my estimation on the psychology of Obama, which I have demonstrated many times I understand very well, is that this idiot would walk right into his own assassination, out of his own stupidity, and that's the only way this thing could happen. If he weren't a stupid jerk, he couldn't get assassinated that way. But since he is a stupid jerk, the danger is he will get assassinated that way. The liberal use of the term, 'stupid jerk,' is very important.

"You don't know what they're going to do or when, even if you think you have inside information," he said. "You have to know what the problem is, and what you're going to do as precautions against the nature of the problem."

The April 12-13 summit will be followed on the 15th, by the mass "Tea Party" rally in Washington, and there are crazy so-called left-wingers who have called on their followers to infiltrate and disrupt that rally and simultaneous "Tea Party" rallies planned around the country.

"The disrupters would belong to the Obama side," LaRouche observed. "Therefore, it's calculable that that would be a perfect setup, in which to get him."

Those demonstrators will then be encouraged by some to stay over in Washington for April 19 demonstrations, which are provocative gun rallies. One across the Potomac from Washington with weapons, the other, in full sight of the first, on the Mall without weapons, but for the 'right to bear arms.'

LaRouche summed up the case: "This whole scenario, the whole environment, reminds us old-timers of the Kennedy assassination. The setting for the Kennedy assassination. The remarkable similarities, if you look at the thing from the aspect of principle, rather than detail. Also, Governor McDonnell of Virginia has proclaimed April to be Confederacy month— another provocation. A racist provocation."

Glass-Steagall or Die!: Trichet's Blunder

Glass-Steagall or Die!:

TRICHET'S BLUNDER

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

April 9, 2010 (LPAC)— The introduction of the Glass- Steagall legislation under U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, saved civilization from the looming threat of the global effects of a U.S.A. collapse, and went on to secure the United States and many nations of Europe and elsewhere from exactly that type of general, planet-wide catastrophe which is onrushing throughout the world considered as a whole today.

It was the termination of Glass-Steagall, under U.S. President Richard Nixon, by the incompetent counsel of Arthur Burns and others in mid-August 1971, which unleashed the chain-reaction sequence of economic catastrophes leading into the present, virtually hopeless situation under any effort to continue the present monetarist system throughout the world today.

It was this Glass-Steagall reform which rescued the war-time Europe of the 1940s, and for more than a decade later, against the ruin which would have been inevitable without the benefits of the fixed-exchange-rate system traceable to the implications of the original Glass-Steagall reform.

Jean-Claude Trichet should recognize the implications of those and related facts. In his reply to a question, in which he argued that Glass-Steagall was a U.S. matter not relevant for other nations today, he seems to show a strange indifference to the most essential of the historical facts of about eighty years of preceding world history. For, surely, today, unless reform of a Glass-Steagall type of fixed-exchange-rate system is introduced, there will never be an economic recovery anywhere in Europe for some generations yet to come.

Although the worst policies were introduced to the U.S.A. itself only under Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, by legalization of what had been the criminal practice of use of "financial derivatives," the basis for the monstrously tragic reform perpetrated by Greenspan must be understood as a looming threat since the relevant events of August 1971.

I would therefore suggest, that Glass-Steagall is an urgently relevant issue of policy for each and every nation of Europe today. Since I have been the most successful economic forecaster of these recent decades, a skill which Alan Greenspan has recently admitted that he lacks, intelligent Europeans should review currently crucial matters of relevance accordingly.

Drug Enforcement Agencies Fail Because of Obama

April 8, 2010 (LPAC)—Even though Afghanistan is responsible for 93% of all the opium produced in the world, and despite the fact that the Drug Enforcement Administration is working as the key lead agency in interdicting narcotics and arresting traffickers, the DEA has only 96 agents working there—all volunteers. This is an all-time high number of DEA agents in Afghanistan, but it doesn't come close to what is needed against the traffic. And of the 130,000 U.S. troops (not all of them are there yet), and an even greater number of civilian "support" personnel and contractors, only a limited number will be assigned to assist the DEA mission.

At the beginning of April, DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart, who has been a longstanding competent voice in identifying narco-terrorism, made a three-day visit to Afghanistan, which included a roundtable with reporters at the U.S. embassy in Kabul. The Russian language website afghanistan.ru reported on the trip, noting that Leonhart declared that the DEA objective is to "eliminate" the connection between narcotics and terrorism.

But Leonhart also confirmed that eradication of the drug crop is off the table — as ordered by Obama in March 2009. Leonhart was asked at her press roundtable about the plans for eradication in Marjah, where Gen. Stanley McChrystal declared recent "victory", while surrounded by poppy fields and buildings hiding heroin labs.

"The DEA, we're the investigative body," Leonhart said. "I said that our mission is going after the major traffickers, so we really don't have an eradication mission." She confirmed that the eradication mission is in the hands of the Afghanistan government, both the "Governor Led Eradication program," and the Afghan "National Interdiction Unit." This is highly ironic, since Obama considers the Afghan government corrupt. Several Afghanistan experts in touch with EIR have said that the Afghan troops are highly inadequate, untrustworthy, and according to regional government intelligence services, a large number of Afghan police and army recruits are opium or heroin users.

The way to make the DEA mission successful is by implementing LaRouche's call for a coordinated U.S. and Russia "sudden, unexpected hit against the Afghan dope trade." Through an alliance that includes neighboring Iran, and China, which could exert important influence on other neighbors.

Obama Covers Up U.S. Troops' Heroin Problem to Protect the British-Run Drug Trade

April 8, 2010 (LPAC)—Those old enough to recall it, know that the US troops fighting in Vietnam 1965-75, became addicted to heroin on a grand scale. Now, Barack Obama has plunged the United States into yet another such long, no-win war; but this time, our troops are literally fighting right in the very opium-poppy fields themselves,— while Obama is acting on the orders of his British controller Tony Blair, to do nothing to disrupt Afghanistan's massive heroin production.

Statesman Lyndon LaRouche has called on the US to destroy the opium crop and heroin labs overnight, in conjunction with Russia, and then immediately withdraw our troops, to continue to fight and defeat the heroin problem through interdiction and containment from without.

Although the Pentagon denies it, and the Veterans Administration (VA) keeps mum about it, one would naturally expect that the US troops in Afghanistan must be becoming victim today, as in Vietnam earlier, to a massive heroin problem. Moreover, compare the susceptibility of today's so-called "all-volunteer army," recruited largely from the economically most-desperate, with the draftees' army in Vietnam. And further, it has been documented that today's US Army recruiters often do not allow a "volunteer's" background of drugs and petty crime to stand in the way of their recruitment quotas. Meanwhile, a large part of the US forces in Afghanistan are professional mercenaries, subject to no discipline and often morally degraded. All in all, what more dangerous combination in opium-drenched Afghanistan, where a heroin habit can be sustained for as little as $1 a day, according to investigative journalist Gerald Posner.

Writing in Salon as early as Aug 7, 2007, filmmaker-journalist Shaun McCanna personally attested that heroin could readily be bought in the Bagram Bazaar, just outside the gate of Bagram airfield, the largest US base. Accosted by a bazaar trader who asked him, "You want whiskey?", McCanna answered, "No,— heroin," and was ushered inside the trader's stall to buy it. He tried this dozens of times there and never failed to "score."

But US soldiers were not generally going to the bazaar to get their heroin; instead, it was delivered to them right on the base. At the time of McCanna's visit, heroin was being delivered onto the base mainly by 7-14 year-old boys, who threw it over the fence disguised in matchboxes or cigarette packs. But that was right after the "Cheney bomb," the massive bombing which accompanied then Vice-President Cheney's visit in February 2007, bringing greatly-heightened security. Previously, heroin had always been delivered onto the base through the main gate, and McCanna's heroin-peddling source fully expected that he would soon be able to bring it all in through the main gate once again.

Named and unnamed US soldiers told McCanna and Posner that heroin was "everywhere" in the Bagram base. Many knew other soldiers who used it while deployed.

Stateside, McCanna's contacts in and around VA drug-rehab programs told him that addicts' entry into such programs generally takes 2-10 years to reach its peak, but yet some said they were already seeing a surge of heroin addicts from Afghanistan. But then, when he asked to interview them on the record, the VA denied permission.

Gerald Posner provided the sequel to McCanna's account with an Oct 19, 2009 article in the Daily Beast. An unnamed source of Posner's, a US intelligence official, had told him of an internal US intelligence report which found that Taliban and al Qaeda were tagetting US troops with heroin to undermine their effectiveness and raise cash, just as they had done with the Soviet troops earlier.

A US soldier from Afghanistan confirmed parts of McCanna's account to Posner, including the information that soldiers have bartered away military equipment, including knives, helmets and flak jackets, for drugs. "Why do you think you can buy surplus military equipment inside the bazaar?", he asked.

The Pentagon says it has a widespread drug-testing program, and that only a miniscule proportion of troops test positive. But one wonders. Army spokesman George Wright told Posner, "In Iraq, a majority of units inspected at the brigade, battalion, and company levels were meeting the intent of current Army policy, but compliance in Afghanistan is problematic due to operational tempo and unit dispersion."

Former US Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey told a Florida meeting the truth last year: that we must destroy the Afghan opium plants, or US soldiers will continue to abuse heroin, and terrorism will continue to thrive in Afghanistan, as reported in a May 20, 2009 report in the Palm Beach Post.

How Britain Ran Afghanistan's Helmand Opium.

April 6, 2010 (LPAC)—Afghanistan's Helmand province produces almost 4,000 tons of opium annually. That amount is almost 60% of Afghanistan's total opium production. However, Helmand was never such a large producer of opium. It became so after the British troops, under the leadership of the Empire-server Tony Blair, took over control of Helmand.

Cultivation in Helmand Province more than tripled between 2002 and 2007, bringing the area under opium poppy cultivation in 2007 to nearly equal the area cultivated in Afghanistan in 2005 (104,000 hectares), according to the UNODC 2007 survey of opium production in Afghanistan.

In May 2005, during an interview with CNN's "Late Edition," Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai laid the blame for the explosion of opium production in his country at the feet of the U.S. and Britain. "This particular operation in Kandahar or in other parts of the country, which have not been so successful, was supposed to be done by an agency, a department that was funded by the international community, by the United States, by Britain. The failure is theirs, not ours," said Karzai.

Why did Karzai make this accusation? At a conference on "Afghanistan's Reconstruction: The Future," at the University of Nebraska on Oct. 3, 2008, a document said: "In 2002, the farmers were confident about the future when the U.S. returned, following the years of darkness of the Soviet occupation and the anarchy of the 1990s. The farmers of central Helmand had great hopes, expressed enthusiasm and provided substantial support for U.S. funded reconstruction projects in 2002 and an earlier project initiative that was pioneered in 1998. Both of these efforts focused on the central Helmand irrigation system, and the elimination of opium poppy. The farmers then lost confidence and hope after the closing of AIP (Afghan Integrated Program) activities in early 2005 because of security problems. After 2005, there were some nominal if expensive follow-on projects but these typically did not directly benefit the farmers or the agricultural economy, and sometimes to the farmers, they seemed irrelevant investments."

Get this: Once the AIP was shut down, Helmand was handed over to the British. Some 7,000 British troops moved in to take over the "security" of Helmand. Within a year, Helmand was on the verge of becoming the world's biggest drugs supplier, cultivating more opium than entire countries, such as Myanmar, Morocco, or even Colombia.

Britain once again got control of a chunk of the world's opium supply. In the 18th Century, it was the opium that helped Britain to build its colonial empire.

Obama's Opium War

We Have To Destroy the Heroin Supplies. What happens to Soros ?

April 6, 2010 (LPAC)—"We have to destroy the heroin supplies," statesman Lyndon LaRouche said today, speaking after the U.S. military advances in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. Afghanistan produces more than 90% of world heroin, most of it right there in Helmand.

"We have to destroy the heroin supplies. Since we're in there in a war, we can make an attack on the fields ourselves. That's what we do!

"I say that there should be a direct attack by U.S. forces, on the heroin fields themselves. We destroy the supply! This place is where the greatest amount of heroin is circulated internationally. This is a crime against humanity! And since we're involved in a military engagement there, we should go in there and just drop something on it, and destroy it.

"The United States forces, since they're engaged in a war in Afghanistan, have to have a withdrawal program. Which is, bomb the s—t out of that center of opium production in Helmand Province! And, tell the Russians we're going to do it!"

Obama's Opium War

Admiral Stavridis Identifies Afghan Opium as Fuel of Caucasus Security Threat

April 6, 2010 (LPAC)—Adm. James Stavridis, who took over as commander of U.S. European Command (EUCOM) last July,told the Ambassadors from the Black Sea nations at an April 1 conference in Stuttgart, that the flow of narcotics, particularly heroin from Afghanistan, human trafficking, and weapons smuggling, are some of the factors that contribute to growing instability in an area where regional rivalries have historically limited cooperation. "When I look at the [Caucasus region] in general, as we see with the recent subway bombings ... I'm worried about that as a zone of terrorism," Stavridis said following meetings with diplomats at his U.S. European Command headquarters.

"For instance," he said, "NATO needs to do more regarding heroin flowing into the region from Afghanistan." Stavridis said that heroin is to blame for the deaths of some 30,000 Russians between the ages of 18-24, last year. "That, in and of itself, is a humanitarian disaster. And the profit and the money from that goes right back to the Taliban in Afghanistan," the Admiral pointed out. "Heroin made from Afghanistan poppy crops generates from $100 to $400 million each year for the insurgency. And though poppy production has declined in the past year, the situation is a long way from good," he said.

Acknowledging that the U.S. relationship with Russia, the most important player in the region, was complicated in recent years, but has now begun to improve, Stavridis pointed out that the Russians are concerned with poppy production in Afghanistan. Russian officials in recent weeks have been increasingly critical of the U.S. and NATO, saying that a more aggressive eradication strategy against poppy growers is needed. Stavridis said he intends to speak with his Russian counterparts in the near future to discuss NATO's counternarcotic efforts, which in large part are focused on getting farmers to grow alternative crops. "We're going to have to help Afghanistan solve that problem," Stavridis said.

Obama's Opium War

 

Collateral Murder - Wikileaks - Iraq

Another Count of Impeachment Has Just Come Up Today

April 6, 2010 (LPAC)-- Beyond the fact that he has just jammed through a Hitlerian genocide program against the U.S. population with his so-called health-care reform; beyond even the fact that he has sent U.S. troops to fight in Afghanistan while supporting their battlefield enemies by protecting the Afghan drug trade, beyond all that: Barack Obama is impeachable as well, for joining with the British Empire in an opium war which is destroying civilization.

Under British sponsorship and protection, Afghan opium production has risen to about 8,000 tons per year, DOUBLE the entire estimated WORLD production of 4,000 tons in 1989. It is illustrative that all the growth in Afghan production has been in Helmand province, all under the noses of British troops stationed there from 2001-2010. During that period, Afghan opium production moved partly or completely out of all other Afghan areas into Helmand, at the same time as total Afghan production mushroomed.

By now, Afghanistan's production, which is 90% of all world production, amounts to fully 160% of estimated total world consumption, which is estimated at only 5,000 tons per year. As the unrefined product floods across the border into Iran, it is now widely estimated that fully 20% of Iran's population have become opium addicts.

Because of the longer distances involved in the smuggling routes which cross Russia, it is the refined product, heroin, which is smuggled out via Russia, while the less refined, weightier opium is smuggled through Iran. Now even before the latest wave of narcotics-fueled international terrorism hit Russia with the Moscow subway bombings, Russia was already fighting an existential battle against heroin addiction.

This is behind Russia's repeated appeals, during March, for international cooperation, especially with the U.S. and NATO, against the Afghan drug plague. Each was humiliatingly rejected by the British and their puppet Obama. Obama's State Department turned Russia down on March 1, eliciting a biting reply from the Russian Foreign Ministry. When Russia's drug tsar Viktor Ivanov convened officials from 30 nations for a March 15 meeting in Kabul, a British NATO representative snidely told him that it was up to the Afghans to decide how to deal with the opium!

Finally, the NATO-Russia Council held a special meeting March 24 to hear Ivanov present Russia's proposal, only to turn it down once again. NATO Secretary-General Fogh Rasmussen told the Russians that there were other things they could do against the Afghan drugs; presumably to give NATO helicopters and other goodies which they have been asking from Russia.

But, as LaRouche pointed out, "They were not going to stop the drug-trafficking anyway. The best thing we do is pull out! The first thing to do is pull out absolutely, and say, well, the Brits won't behave themselves, so we're pulling out! We're pulling out, and we will exert sanctions against the drug-trafficking from that area. We'll join with Russia in actions of sanctioning that attitude by the British. And say: until the British change their attitude! And say that: that's what you have to say: 'The British have got change their attitude — or else!'

"The other thing we ought to say, and not exclude this, is say the Russians are blaming the United States for not cooperating, but the Russians are collaborating with the British, who are the people who are responsible for this problem. The Russians have got to learn to get smart and break with the British! They should pick on the enemy! The enemy's not the United States, even though the President is an asshole. (He's not a good asshole, all he does is deliver the product. But the product stinks!)"

On top of that has been the most recent series of drug-linked terrorist bombings from that of the St. Petersburg-Moscow line, to the Moscow subway bombings and yesterday's suicide bombing in Ingushetia. Ingushetia's President said that they were likely all closely linked; the terrorists don't recognize the existence of the various republics, but see them all as part of the single Emirate of the North Caucusus. This British-controlled and Saudi-funded "Emirate" or "Caliphate" is the form Britain's Caucusus insurgency has taken since 9/11. LaRouche said, "We consider this 9/11. It's the intention of 9/11. A Wahhabite insurgency, so therefore it's an extension of 9/11.

"The point is going to come, that the Russians are going to have to take action against this thing. They have no choice! And the United States will have to support the Russians. Because this is international terrorism! The British are condoning international terrorism. And the evidence is there!"

Summing up, LaRouche said, "I think we just have to go with the thing that we demand that this be another reason for the impeachment of the President of the United States, and make this an issue. We're going for: this guy's got to be impeached. Don't be a dope! Impeach the sonofabitch!

"I think it's extremely important. We've just got to think about this, and we've got to go full steam on this, and we've got to go for an impeachment on this count. Another count of impeachment has just come up today! That's the way it has to be done. An 'in addition to...' The following are the reasons for impeachment.

"Conniving with the British in an opium war which is destroying civilization. And therefore, the British in supporting this, must be considered an outlaw state. The British system is currently an outlaw state, on the basis of this. And since the British have a reputation for drug-pushing, which goes back to the end of the 18th Century. The British Empire has been a drug-pusher, and it still is. And, the Queen does push drugs! You idiot!"