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go-redgirl · 6 years ago

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Mueller Report Exonerates President Trump [Weekly Update] Judicial Watch ^ | March 29, 2019 | Tom Fitton

Mueller Never Had a Good-Faith Basis to Pursue President Trump Did Deep State Cover Up Chinese Hack of Clinton Email System? Judicial Watch Sues to Find Out What Were Obama’s Spy Chiefs Telling the Media about Trump?

Mueller Never Had a Good-Faith Basis to Pursue President Trump

The fizzling out of the corrupt Mueller investigation is great victory for the rule of law and our constitutional republic. Here is the statement I issued in response Attorney General Barr’s initial summary of the special counsel’s report.

The long, national nightmare is over and President Trump has been vindicated. The corruptly-created and constitutionally abusive Mueller investigation failed to find any evidence to support the big lie that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government.

We’re pleased that AG Barr rejected Mueller’s attempt to smear President Trump with obstruction of justice innuendo by concluding that no such charges could be credibly sustained. Frankly, Mueller never had a valid basis upon which to investigate President Trump for obstruction of justice.

Let’s be clear, neither Mueller, the Obama FBI, DOJ, CIA, State Department, nor the Deep State ever had a good-faith basis to pursue President Trump on Russia collusion. Russia collusion wasn’t just a hoax, it was criminal abuse, which is why Judicial Watch has fought and will continue to fight for Russiagate documents in federal court.

The targeting of President Trump served to protect Hillary Clinton and her enablers/co-conspirators in Obama administration from prosecution. Attorney General Barr can begin restoring the credibility of the Justice Department by finally initiating a thorough investigation of the Clinton emails and related pay-to-play scandals and the abuses behind the targeting of President Trump.

Judicial Watch has long called for the shutdown of the Mueller special counsel operation and has pursued dozens of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits in connection with the illicit targeting and other abuses of President Trump. Judicial Watch FOIA litigation exposed, for example:

The dossier-based Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications targeting President Trump

FBI payments to Christopher Steele

FBI firing of Steele

Extensive DOJ (Ohr) collusion w/Steele, Simpson, Fusion GPS

No court hearings by defrauded FISA courts before warrants were issued

Anti-Trump bias by Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann

As you would expect, the Democrats are refusing to back down from their collusion lies. As I told the media this week, we must demand accountability for this attack on the Republic. Judicial Watch, not Congress nor the corrupt media, remains the best path forward for getting the full truth about the effort to overthrow President Trump, which is the worst corruption scandal in American history.

Did Deep State Cover Up Chinese Hack of Clinton Email System? Judicial Watch Sues to Find Out

Back in 2015, the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG), an office under the Director of National Intelligence, discovered that Hillary Clinton’s emails werebeing sent to a state-owned Chinese company.

Bells went off, and the ICIG sent an emissary to the FBI to meet with Peter Strzok, who was later removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and fired from the FBI after his bias against President Trump was revealed. The FBI was being run at time by James Comey.

As you might imagine, nothing happened.

We want to know what was discussed at this meeting, and we are suing the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) for details.

We sued after the ODNI failed to respond adequately to a July 13, 2018, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request ( Judicial Watch Inc. vs Office of the Director of National Intelligence (No. 1:19-cv-00807)). We are seeking:

Any and all records regarding, concerning, or related to the meeting between Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) official Frank Rucker, ICIG attorney Jeanette Macmillian, former Federal Bureau of Investigation Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok, and other[s] regarding security threats associated with the private e-mail server utilized by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

This request includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Any and all reports, notes, briefing materials, presentations, or similar records created in preparation for, during, and/or pursuant to the meeting.

Any and all related records of communication between any official, employee, or representative of the ICIG and any other individual or entity.

For purposes of clarification, the meeting in question was referenced by Rep. Louis Gohmert during the testimony of Mr. Strzok at a House of Representatives hearing on July 12, 2018.

Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said during a hearing with FBI official Peter Strzok that the ICIG reportedly found an “anomaly on Hillary Clinton’s emails going through their private server, and when they had done the forensic analysis, they found that her emails, every single one except four, over 30,000, were going to an address that was not on the distribution list. It was a compartmentalized bit of information that was sending it to an unauthorized source.”

Gohmert said the ICIG presented the findings to Strzok, but that the FBI official did not do anything with the information.

Gohmert: Let me refresh your memory. The Intelligence Community Inspector General Chuck McCullough sent his investigator Frank Rucker along with an IGIC attorney Janette McMillan to brief you and Dean Chapelle and two other FBI personnel who I won’t name at this time, about an anomaly they had found on Hillary Clinton’s emails that were going to the private unauthorized server that you were supposed to be investigating?

Our lawsuit could further expose how anti-Trump activists like disgraced FBI official Peter Strzok bent over backwards to protect Hillary Clinton from having to answer for her national security crimes. The scandal of the illicit Trump spying is directly tied to the Deep State protection of Hillary Clinton.

We had a separate lawsuit against the ODNI that would have required it to conduct, as required by law, an assessment and prepare a report on how and whether Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email practices as U.S. Secretary of State damaged national security.

Hillary Clinton was given full cover by the Deep State. Don’t think the Deep State has has given up.

What Were Obama’s Spy Chiefs Telling the Media about Trump?

President Obama’s top spy chiefs appear to have been ringleaders in the illicit effort to overthrow President Trump. They enlisted the FBI, foreign spies, and the media in their efforts. I’m not at all surprised that they found a warm welcome at CNN.

Now we want to know the details of their connections to the network. We have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) seeking records of communications between former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and CNN around the time the Clinton-Democrat National Committee anti-Trump dossier was being pitched to key media outlets.

A House report detailed that Clapper leaked information regarding the dossier to CNN in January 2017. The former ODNI chief signed on as an analyst for CNN in August 2017.

We are also seeking records of communications between Clapper and Obama CIA Director John Brennan regarding the dossier, which was authored by former British spy and FBI payee Christopher Steele.

We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ( Judicial Watch v. Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Central Intelligence Agency (No. 1:19-cv-00776)) after the agencies failed to respond to our April 23, 2018, FOIA request seeking:

All records of communication, including emails (whether on .gov or non-.gov email accounts), text messages and instant chats, between officials in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, including but not limited to James Clapper, and employees, representatives and contractors of CNN.

The time frame for the records request is May 2016 through May 2017.

All records of communications between the office of the Director of Central Intelligence and representatives of CNN; DCI John Brennan and DNI James Clapper regarding the collection of memos known as the “Steele Dossier:” and between DCI John Brennan and DNI James Clapper regarding CNN.

All records of communication, including emails (whether on .gov or non-.gov email accounts), text messages and instant chats, between officials in the office of the Director of Central Intelligence, including but not limited to DCI John Brennan, and employees, representatives and contractors of CNN. The time frame for the requested records is May 2016 through May 2017.

All records of communication, including emails (whether on .gov or non-.gov email accounts), text messages and instant chats, between DCI John Brennan and DNI James Clapper regarding the collection of memos known as the “Steele Dossier”. The time frame for records requested in this bullet item is May 2016 through January 2017.

All records of communication, including emails (whether on .gov or non-.gov email accounts), text messages and instant chats, between DCI John Brennan and DNI James Clapper regarding the news network CNN. The time frame for records requested in this bullet item is May 2016 through January 2017.

In a March 2018, report , Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee exposed that:

“Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, now a CNN national security analyst, provided inconsistent testimony to the Committee about his contacts with the media, including CNN.” And, “when questioned by the Committee … Clapper admitted that he confirmed the existence of the dossier to the media.”

Clapper later admitted he had discussed the Steele dossier with CNN’s Jake Tapper and other journalists in early 2017, shortly before President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

In a January 10, 2017 report with bylines from Tapper, Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto and Carl Bernstein, CNN first revealed that then-FBI Director James Comey had briefed then-President-elect Trump on the dossier’s allegations.

The Intelligence Committee’s report detailed that “Clapper subsequently acknowledged discussing the ‘dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper,’ and admitted that he might have spoken with other journalists about the same topic. Clapper’s discussion with Tapper took place in ‘early January 2017,’ around the time [intelligence officials] briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump, on ‘the Christopher Steele information.’”

Shortly after CNN’s January 10, 2017, report, BuzzFeed News published the dossier in full.

The four CNN reporters were awarded the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Merriman Smith Award for their coverage of the dossier story.

Brennan, in an interview with NBC News on February 4, 2018, insisted that the Steele dossier “did not play any role whatsoever” in early intelligence assessments on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Several subsequent reports strongly contradict Brennan’s claim.

We are again in court trying to get the truth about the Obama gang’s illegal leaks and conspiracy targeting President Trump. Clapper and Brennan were key proponents of the big lie, exposed by the Mueller report. President Trump did not collude with the Russians. Once again, our FOIA litigation is the best hope for getting full accountability on this attack on our constitutional republic.

Until next week …

TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections KEYWORDS: ag barr; brennan; cia; clapper; cnn; cover up; deep state; dni; email scandal; gohmert; hillary clinton; icig; judicial watch; jw; mueller report; president trump; strzok; tom fitton; trump; weekly update

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roguenewsdao · 7 years ago

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Schiller Institute NYC Webcast with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity's (VIPS) William Binney and Ray McGovern

Why 2018 Promises the Total Unraveling of the Anglo-American Deep State Coup vs. Trump: Grassley and Graham Call for Criminal Indictment Against 'Ex' Agent MI6 Christopher Steele

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, who interestingly enough previously struck down some NSA bulk collection surveillance as unconstitutional in 2015, ruled last week against Fusion GPS withholding their bank records from U.S. House investigators. A whining op-ed by Fusion GPS principals in The New York Times defending their work that an FBI Deputy Director refused to authenticate any significant portion of under oath did them no good, as Rep. Devin Nunes' (R-CA) House and Grassley's Senate committees continue to dig into the 'private intelligence firm's corrupt links to Democrat partisan hacks inside Jim Comey and Andrew McCabe's FBI and conspiring for then director John Brennan to politicize intelligence at the CIA. Fusion GPS payoffs to major news outlet journalists who pushed its stories on behalf of the Democratic Party deep state is also under investigation. The now public letter from Sens. Grassley and Graham to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein makes it clear why, in a leak timed for New Year's Eve, defenders of McCabe and Comey sought to claim that the Russia investigation began in July 2016 after a tip from an Australian government official about then low level campaign aide George Papadopoulos. Once again, the so-called '5Eyes' alliance of the British and Aussies are seen meddling in a U.S. election under the guise of passing on helpful intelligence tips about Russian efforts to infiltrate the Trump camp or offer it emails the SVR/GRU hacked from Hillary Clinton's illegal classified data containing bathroom server.

5Eyes British Meddling in American Politics and the Absence of NSA/GCHQ Proof of 'Russians Hacking the DNC'

It should be noted here that even if Papadopoulos repeating gossip over drinks justified the FBI opening an inquiry, that the NYT account deliberately conflates the missing and presumed deleted (and then widely discussed across anti-Clintons alt-media) 33,000 server emails with those that were leaked later from the DNC. It's certainly possible, and we now know the FBI considered it likely until Comey and his pro-Hillary counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok shut the line of inquiry down, that Russia and other foreign powers security services did hack alongside the now imprisoned Romanian known as Guccifer into Hillary's server and steal highly classified data the then Secretary of State recklessly left at the easily uncovered Clinton mail domain. Nonetheless, the evidence of 'Russians hacking the DNC' relies on the NATO G-NGO Atlantic Council linked and debunked research of Crowdstrike. As we heard this week, the Justice Department has reopened their investigation into pay for play corruption while Hillary was Secretary of State at the Clinton Foundation, which 'coincided' with a fire on the grounds of the Clintons residence in Chappaqua, New York.

As Harley Schlanger wrote here at RogueMoney in October 2017, there is strong circumstantial evidence Papadopoulos, who is now cooperating with Mueller after lying about his contacts to the FBI, was a British intelligence plant all along. There are certainly signs the young Greek American was living beyond his means while traveling the world with his gorgeously telegenic Italian girlfriend who has given interviews defending her man to the media since his cooperation with Mueller was reported. What the Comey/McCabe loyalists left in the Bureau and Democrats are desperately trying to do is deflect from the core issue multiple allies of the President on Capitol Hill are pursuing (along with reports Comey leaked classified information for which he could be prosecuted): was the partisan hot garbage dossier used as the basis for obtaining FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign? If so, that would be an abuse of intelligence resources by the Obama Administration against its political opponents worse than anything President Richard Nixon was impeached for in the 1970s. And how much did the FBI under Comey/McCabe agree to pay its author while Fusion GPS pals promoted it across the intelligence community, ultimately with the aid of Brennan and then ODNI James Clapper?

It has been reported by The Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel, who has also pointed out the Democrats are citing 'Russian descent' to mark Americans for suspicion of 'collusion', that Clapper recently told CNN he had no recollection of Papadopoulos name. Clapper made this denial on the RussiaGate hyping fake news network that pays him as a consultant despite, as DNI, him having the authority to request the unmasking of Papadopoulos or any other 'incidentally collected' by NSA American citizen's name. We know Clapper in his high position could have easily done so, because so many other Obama Administration officials with far less 'need to know' ranging from Susan Rice to Samantha Power improperly unmasked Trump campaign associates while looking for useful Russia-related dirt for the Democrats. Just as he perjured himself regarding NSA mass surveillance in Senate questions he knew were coming, the arrogant deep state poster boy Clapper is either lying to the American people again, or the whole Papadopoulos story is a CYA concoction. Binney Exposes the Lies Then and Now of former NSA Director/DNI James Clapper

As former NSA technical director turned whistle blower William Binney has repeatedly stated in public, the same Agency he once served that easily traced Chinese government hacking operations to specific People's Liberation Army personnel based in a Shanghai office building ought to have no problems revealing how it tracked the alleged Russian hackers behind the DNC dump. The fact that NSA under now retiring Admiral Mike Rogers has declined to present any evidence supporting the Comey/Clapper/Brennan rigged January 2017 'assessment', and its British counterparts at GCHQ have presented zero evidence showing a custody chain from Russian hackers to Wikileaks Julian Assange monitored by HMG 24/7 inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, reveals the fraudulence of the entire case.

In addition to the full two and a half hour recording from Friday, we're reposting the transcript of Harley Schlanger's most recent interview with Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp LaRouche regardng the alleged Steve Bannon White House 'tell all' Fire and Fury book. Harley also discuss Lyndon LaRouche's four economic laws, the failure of British/City of London driven divide and conquer geopolitics far beyond their failed coup against Trump, and China's One Belt One Road (OBOR) megaprojects gaining momentum. -- JWS

End Geopolitics, Adopt LaRouche's Four Laws LaRouchePAC webcast January 4, 2018

HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hello, I'm Harley Schlanger from the Schiller Institute, welcome to this week's Schiller Institute international webcast, featuring our President and founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

Helga, in your New Year's greeting, you stated that this year there is reason for optimism because solutions do exist. What's necessary is to make sure these solutions are implemented. As we will discuss today, there have been very significant developments on a broad range of fronts, including the new exposures that promise the possibility of ending the Mueller investigation. There's the new opening between North and South Korea, as a channel of communications was opened, that's certainly promising; and continuing developments with the Belt and Road Initiative from China.

But let's begin with the situation in the United States: Among the developments around the so-called Russia-gate, there's a new book that came out called Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which just has the typical stink of a British smear-job. But it's opened the door an interesting backlash. What do you make of this book, and the developments around Russia-gate?

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think this book is full of inaccuracies, lies and it had actually a very positive effect, because it quotes Bannon who had come out in the recent period very strongly anti-China, anti-Russia, and so then these things which were said by Bannon, Trump took to send out a White House message distancing himself from Bannon completely, and that has caused a complete storm. So all the media are full of the book, that the book is supposedly a big revelation about what's going on in the White House, that Trump has missed Bannon in this way.

But these are really side shows. Something much, much more important is going on and in the beginning I would like all our viewers and listeners to absolutely make sure that you switch on your livestream connection to larouchepac.com at 7 p.m. tomorrow, because there will be a truly important meeting conducting by the whistleblowers from the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, the VIPS representatives William Binney and Ray McGovern, and also Barbara Boyd who is famous for having written the dossier on Robert Mueller. And they will reveal why all of these lies are very dangerous and would potentially lead to war with Russia; but this meeting of three, probably the best experts on the subject you can imagine, is coming in the context of the whole Russia-gate falling apart.

So while the mainstream media are still trying to change the subject by focussing on this book and on the Bannon story, the real important story instead is what happened yesterday, where, you remember that on Dec. 28, Congressman Devin Nunes who is the head of the House Intelligence Committee had put an ultimatum to the FBI and the Department of Justice to release all documents in relation to the activities involving the DOJ and the FBI in respect to the dossier of Christopher Steele, the so-called "former" MI6 agent, whose dossier was the ground on which this Russia-gate story was founded.

Now, this story is falling apart. And there was another absolutely desperate effort by the head and founder of the Fusion GPS firm Glenn Simpson, which is the firm that hired Christopher Steele in the first place, with an op-ed in the New York Times trying to defuse the whole story, saying what a heroic job they did in protecting the United States from a terrible Russian onslaught in the campaign, and — anyway, so this is all not working, because the truth is coming out. And what happened yesterday is that the head of the FBI Wray, and the Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, went to see House Speaker Paul Ryan and they discussed with him, obviously, the Nunes the request, because shortly afterwards, Nunes released a story that he had an agreement in hand that in the next in the couple of days all the documents would be released pertaining to this story.

Now, I'll only believe it when I actually see that these documents are really there, but he is now very confident that all the documents will be released, and this is a breaking story, because I'm absolutely certain that once these documents are in the hands of the House Intelligence Committee, or the Senate Judiciary Committee, because Senator Grassley is involved in a similar investigation, then this can boomerang! The real story here is not that Russia was colluding with the Trump campaign, the real scandal, which all these question marks lead to, if it turns out that the Obama administration colluded with British intelligence and the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, in order to conspire against an opponent candidate and after he won the election, against an elected President, that is a scandal which could totally dwarf the Watergate scandal and this is now the breaking story.

So don't be confused by what the mainstream media are trying to sell you as the key story, because the true story is around Nunes and around Senator Grassley and around what they are now pursuing.

SCHLANGER: You made the point that there was a desperate attempt to cover this up by the two founders of Fusion GPS. In their statement, they essentially said that the work that they did "proved" that there was Russia intervention, and they spoke in the op-ed as if there was actual proof that had been presented. But, as Bill Binney and Ray McGovern and Barbara Boyd will present in their presentation, there's no proof that's been presented, and this why the whole story is falling apart.

Also, Helga, I think it's important that Paul Manafort, who was one of the people who was targetted by Mueller, has filed a civil action to have his case dropped, because it's outside of the range of the Special Counsel's mandate.

Now, in the midst of all this, you have the upcoming State of the Union address, we have new warnings of a financial crisis, how does this play out, what's the potential, if Trump could be freed from this operation, what's the potential with the coming weeks on the economy?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: The warnings of Roger Stone that the cabal which is trying to get rid of Trump will not give up has to be taken very seriously. Just now, I think 56 congressmen filed, or said they want to form a committee to see if they can pursue the 25th Amendment against Trump, and they're trotting out all kinds of psychiatrists who try to interpret the tweets of Trump and find some reasons that he's not fit for President. I mean, it looks quite different: If Trump is freed of the Russia-gate scandal, which is about to happen; if Trump is freed of the populist, whole scenario which Bannon was associated with, and in his message he said: I was elected by the forgotten men and women, and I'm going to answer to them, not Bannon.

So, if these two chokepoints are removed from Trump, then the field is totally open, and there are now various conservative news blogs and others who demand that all of this idea that you create jobs with the tax reform and so forth, this all doesn't work, you need Glass-Steagall; so if even from the conservative Republican circles is coming now the demand for Glass-Steagall, this is very important. And our colleagues in the United States, the colleagues from LaRouche PAC, they are involved in a major campaign to distribute the Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche — the first law being Glass-Steagall; and then go to a Hamiltonian credit system, and then the United States should join the New Silk Road — this is the campaign about which we're saying there are solutions; because it would be very easy, once you have a clear perspective going for a massive infrastructure program, and the big battel right now, as far as I can see, is in the Republican Party, where the neo-cons and the people close to Wall Street want to prevent that from happening, and instead go with the idea of cutting entitlements and things like that.

So the crucial battle is really in the remaining, I think three weeks up to the State of the Union address occurs. So all people who are concerned should really see, on the other side, you have this tremendous momentum of the New Silk Road. Even people who have been distant and warning against the New Silk Road, they're now saying, "forget all reservations, this is the big game in town, it's the only show, it's the largest infrastructure program on the planet," and it is obvious that any country which does not work with the New Silk Road will be sidelined.

There are tremendous strategic realignments going on right now, and as one former German ambassador to China just wrote in a long article in a German economic newspaper, that the people who are saying that the relationship of Europe to the United States or China would be a zero-sum game are completely wrong, because you can have both a very good relationship with the United States and with China, and those who have reservations obviously only project their own hegemonic intentions from the previous century onto China. And this guy, Schaefer, is then saying he knows Xi Jinping personally from previous years and he is a totally calm, person with long vision, having an idea of a harmonious development, and people should just join.

And there are more and more voices of even bankers, who now say, no, this is the new game in town. So if the United States can be brought to join this New Silk Road, and Chinese investments in infrastructure in the United States can take place, — I mean, China is a champion on this! They have now already 25,000 km fast train; they're planning to have 38,000 km by the year 2030; they will connect every major city in China through a fast train system. And why can't that be done in the United States? The United States is in bitter demand of a total renewal of infrastructure. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a couple of days ago had a very good article saying that the fact that the Atlanta Airport, which is the largest hub for air traffic, closed down for 11 hours because the electricity had a blackout because of old age, and that that is the condition of most of the electrical grid in the United States, because the infrastructure in the United States is aging, it's 50, 60, 100 years old — bridges, roads, all of this needs to be repaired.

This cannot be repaired, or cannot be financed, if you stay within the rules of Wall Street, and therefore, the big battle is how can we get President Trump to stick to his election promise, — Glass-Steagall, he talked about the American System of economy, he talked about Lincoln and Carey, Alexander Hamilton, — that is what we have to hopefully get on the agenda, and then all the problems can be solved.

SCHLANGER: On that note, Helga, there's also this whole question of Lyndon LaRouche's Four Laws as the basis for this versus this fake economics from Wall Street. The President is I think mistakenly talking about the stock market as an indicator of the economy. You were talking earlier about the warnings coming out internationally, with debt bubbles and financial crisis. It would seem that this would be the incentive, given this danger of a crash, to go back to these campaign promises wouldn't it?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes. As the year is just starting, a lot of analysts from around the world, including from China, are warning of new black swans in the financial system. Also Nomi Prins and many other analysts, bankers from many countries are warning that there is 100% certain that this system will crash. It's very difficult to say exactly when it will crash, at the beginning of this year, or a little bit later, but the parameters are all much, much worse than 2008: The corporate debt bubble is much bigger, the indebtedness of the states, student loans, car loans, the real estate situation, all the parameters, and naturally the derivatives exposure, are about one-third to one-half larger than in 2008; with the difference is that all the secret instruments of the central banks have been used up, and the only thing which is left is money pumping. And despite the fact that inflation was not so visible, except in the stock market, the hyperinflation is an absolute possibility, and the stock market — it's a bubble. People should not think that that is an indicator of the health of the economy. If you look at the jobs, how many people are now calculated in labor statistics, the suicide rates, the drug epidemic, all of these are factors affecting the real economy, and that has not yet been addressed.

So the big pressure is really to go for a real, Roosevelt-style infrastructure project with the Four Laws of LaRouche, which involves a lot of physical science. It involves a crash program for fusion power, for space technology, and we need a real discussion about these matters very urgently in the next two to three weeks.

SCHLANGER: And this, of course, is something that the listeners can do something about, by working to ensure that these issues are discussed, that we're not trapped in the fake economic reporting of the mainstream media.

The other significant development on the strategic side of things, was the opening of communications between North Korea and South Korea. This is something that promises the possibility of moving out of this threat of nuclear confrontation. What do you know about this, Helga?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think it is a promising development, because the dialogue has been started. It's not entirely clear on what level it will be actually be conducted, but rumors are also that South Korea and the United States have suspended military training and drills during the time of the Olympics taking place in South Korea, and it is a promising thing. Because if the two Koreas talk to each other, the ice is broken. And I think [D.P.R.K. Chairman] Kim Jong-un is doing it from a position of strength, because he says, North Korea is now a full-fledged nuclear power so nobody can attack us without paying a terrible price for it. And this is because he looked at Saddam Hussein, at Qaddafi, and what was attempted against Assad, and that is why he pursued this way.

So I think if we get away from that kind of immediate danger of confrontation, and South Korea is resuming the Sunshine Policy of Kim Dae-jung, and that, in the context of the New Silk Road, with the promises of Putin to help in the development of North Korea, if they are willing to denuclearized; China offering the Silk Road cooperation, I think we are entering a period where that problem can be brought under control, and I think this is very promises.

And I think the views of [U.S. Ambassador to the UN] Nikki Haley, who says she doesn't care about the two Koreas talking, is just completely wrong! It's a completely arrogant view, because after all, it's the Korean Peninsula which is at stake and the people living there. So, I think it's a very good and promising development.

SCHLANGER: And of course, Nikki Haley is tied to people like John Bolton and the same neo-cons who were responsible for the Iraq War and the chaos in the Middle East.

At the same time, we're seeing a potentially disturbing trend, coming not so much out of Iran, but commentary about Iran, that this may be a regime change under way. What do you know about this situation in Iran, right now?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well — It's a little bit too early to make a definite judgment. What seems to be clear is that the unrest erupted because some mullahs were caught in speculation, where people lost some investments in hedge funds, and then quickly that protest turned from being furious about having lost their savings into demanding a total change of the mullahs. And now basically there is a claim that the MEK was involved in it, pushed by Saudi Arabia.

Now, the MEK [Mujahideen-e-Khalq, aka MKO, PMOI] was on the terrorist list until 2012, until Hillary Clinton took them off, but it was an organization regarded as being a terrorist organization, and it's very clear that whether they were the originators, or if they only jumped on the bandwagon, in any case, now the British, Saudi Arabia, and unfortunately a large part of the Trump administration, including Trump himself, have encouraged this unrest.

I think this is very dangerous, because if you have, for example, civil war in Iran, or just a destabilization — another Syria in Iran — I mean, nobody can want that, because on the other side, if the New Silk Road is extended from China to Iran, which is already under way, then it can be extended to Iraq, to Syria, to Egypt, to Turkey, to Europe, to Africa. It's really the question — and [Iranian President] Rouhani received President Xi Jinping almost three years ago and they agreed that the New Silk Road/Belt and Road Initiative should be extended to Iran and beyond. So, I think that this is a very dangerous development, because if you have a destabilization, the whole Iran deal could go out of the window, you'll be back in the question of building nuclear weapons, and this is really the most dangerous spot in my view right now.

So people should really not fan the flames, because this is just a continuation of the previous British/Saudi policies. When it was clear that ISIS was defeated in Syria and in Iraq, and there are offers now to extend the Silk Road into Afghanistan [via Iran] — it's really the question, can the development be peaceful, that these countries be reconstructed, or are there geopolitical forces at work to try to prevent exactly that?

And I think that people should really help to reconstruct the Middle East, because these people have suffered so much from wars which were based on lies. Just think how many millions of people have lost their lives, how much misery has been created. Look at what's happening in Yemen right now: the worst genocide, 7 million people are in acute danger of losing their lives! The world communist must become adult and stop these games and that is why I said in my New Year's greetings, that of all the many things which have to be straightened out, geopolitics must stop! Geopolitics in the time of thermonuclear weapons cannot be a way to conduct policy. And Xi Jinping has established a new paradigm, with the idea of new, shared community for the shared future of mankind, a community of destiny, and by doing that, he has established a higher level of relations among countries which is not based on geopolitics.

And I think people have to think that through, because people in the West are so accustomed to think that policy is a zero-sum game, if one wins, the other loses, that we cannot have a world where everybody cooperates to the benefit of all, but that is exactly the debate which we have to have. And since the New Silk Road is such a strong dynamic, I think it can be realized: It just needs to be discussed, we have to have a political discourse about these questions, and show a willingness to move to new era of civilization.

SCHLANGER: One of the areas where we see as a bright spot for this "win-win" policy is Africa, where some of these projects are now coming online. You told me earlier that there's now an agreement for Japan to work with China in Africa. What's your perspective on what we can expect in the next period with this cooperation in Africa?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think this is one of the most interesting things, because Japan has not only expressed an absolute willingness to cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative, with the AIIB in a bilateral relation between China and Japan, but Japan has really offered, for the first time, to cooperate with China in the development of four major projects in Africa. Now, this is exactly what the New Silk Road Spirit can bring about: That you not just have bilateral relations in a "win-win" cooperation, but that countries which have major industrial capacities like China and Japan, that they can unite for the benefit of third countries, or in that case even a continent, and help to overcome the underdevelopment.

And that is what the United States should join in, and we are appealing to the Europeans that they should also. Right now there are many countries in Europe which are getting onboard, but some others are not. Very interesting in this context will be the visit of Macron to China on Jan. 8th; the French Economic Minister Le Maire just gave an interview in which he said the intention of Macron is to build an economic backbone from Paris to Moscow to Beijing, and if that would be the outcome of Macron's visit, then you have Eastern Europe, Central Europe, the Balkans, South Europe, and France moving in this direction and that would make the position of Brussels and the non-existing in Berlin very isolated. And I have been saying the whole time, whoever is not getting onboard with this new paradigm, will be sidelined by history and at a great peril for their respective populations.

As I said, the solutions are so much in sight, and therefore there is tremendous reason to be optimistic that this year 2018 can become a very, very positive change in the history of mankind, where we leave these geopolitical confrontations behind us, and have a concert of nations working for the common good.

I know many people think this is completely idealistic and not realistic, but look what China is doing: China is going global. There is a new spirit, which was expressed at the Belt and Road Forum last May, by Xi Jinping and others, it was reiterated at the 19th National Congress of the CPC in October, it was expressed by Xi Jinping, and Wang Yi and others at the New Year's speeches; and China is now moving with an incredible speed to go global. And it's happening on all levels and there's no reason to feel threatened by it, because if countries like Germany or the United States would go back to their best traditions, like the United States going back to the Kennedy Apollo idea, or going back to the New Deal of Roosevelt, there is nothing which the United States and China cannot do together; or Germany and China, and other countries working together.

People have to change their thinking! It's not a zero-sum game. It's the idea, can we define goals for humanity, can we do what was discussed in the Federalist Papers already in the young America? Can find a self-rule which is for the long-term survivability of our society? And I think we can. I think the human species is capable of reason, I think we are even capable of love — and people think love has nothing to do with politics, but that's not true! The outcome of the Thirty Years' War was a terrible destruction in Europe but out of that came the Peace of Westphalia. And if you look at the principles of the Peace of Westphalia, the two most important features were for the sake of peace, forget every evil which was done by the one or the other side, and concentrate on joint development; and the second principle was, for the sake of peace, foreign policy from now on has to be based on "the interest of the other in love."

And I think that that is what China is doing: It's consistent with the idea of a harmonious development of all nations, and that was the policy of John Quincy Adams, so it's not alien to American history. It was also associated with humanism in Europe, with the idea of Leibniz, of Cusa, of many other great people who were thinking in terms of development as the goal of history.

So we are at a crucial change of the era, where we have to leave the era of geopolitics behind us and move to a completely new phase in the history of civilization.

SCHLANGER: Helga, I think you just summarized very beautifully why we can be optimistic as we approach this year. But! optimism alone won't do it: We have to be active. And I call on all of our listeners and supporters to make sure that this is the year you become members of the Schiller Institute and become active with us, so that we can ensure that these policy solutions will be implemented.

So Helga, until next week, thank you very much, and we'll see you then.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: OK, bye.

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