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Understanding Nuclear Power, #1:

AVOGADRO’S HYPOTHESIS AND ATOMIC WEIGHT (WHEN 2 + 1 = 2)

by Larry Hecht March 29, 2005

(This is the first in a series of pedagogicals which will address the scientific basis of nuclear power from a conceptual, historical standpoint. The figures can be accessed at www.wlym.com/~bruce/atomicweight.zip).

Our modern understanding of the atom and the microscopic domain has its origin in two parallel lines of development in experimental science which date to the period from approximately 1785-1869. This experimental work closely overlaps the developments in mathematics which we have been studying respecting the Gauss-Riemann complex domain, and a patient and not-too-literal approach to its study will lead to many beautiful realizations of the conceptual connections. One track is the Ampere-Gauss-Weber electrodynamics upon which the greater part of modern experimental physics practice rests. The other is the development of the science of chemistry, from the work of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) to Dmitri Mendeleeff’s 1869 formulation of the periodicity of the elements as arranged by atomic weights. Modern physical chemistry, including nuclear chemistry and the Pasteur-Vernadsky tradition of modern biogeochemistry, owes its existence to these latter developments.

We shall focus here on the second of these two important lines of development.

Most people have heard the term “atomic weight.” What does it mean? To believe in such a notion, we must first accept the existence of a very small, invisible thing called an atom; we must further suppose the existence of common species of atoms, and that each exemplar will exhibit the same properties as any other; finally, we must imagine that we might find some means of weighing this almost non-existent entity. Not only has this proven possible, but, strange as it might seem, the concept of atomic weight lies at the foundation of nearly all the breakthroughs of modern science and technology. Dmitri Mendeleeff’s discovery of the Periodicity of the Elements rests upon this principle, as do all the developments which have allowed us to harness power from the atomic nucleus. The curious anomaly in the atomic weight of helium–that it is less than the sum of the weight of its constituent particles–was the basis for the recognition that fusion energy would be possible. (The possibility of realizing energy from this anomaly, which became known as the “mass defect,” was described in a 1914 paper by William Draper Harkins, the teacher of our friend Dr. Robert Moon). The nuclear chemistry which is the basis for heavy-element fission, the source of power for nuclear reactors, also rests on the concept of atomic weight. Thus, given its importance to the progress of all modern science, we have decided to devote this exercise to an outline of how the concept of atomic weight came about, anticipating that readers will find a way to pursue the further study and experimentation required for a deeper understanding.

A doctrine of atomism–that everything is made up of tiny and indivisible particles–existed since ancient times, its most famous proponent being the Eleatic philospher, Democritus. But the atom of chemistry was not conceived by the followers of Democritus nor his modern reviver Gassendi, but rather by thinkers who tended toward the tradition of Plato, Cusa and Leibniz. The chemical atomic theory, upon which the concept of atomic weight is based, developed in the first decade of the 19th Century out of work centered around the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. The clear development of the concept of atomic weight took place over the course of several decades following that, led by the inspirer of Mendeleeff, Charles Frederic Gerhardt (1826-1845). Its acceptance was not achieved until a famous international congress of chemists in Karlsruhe in 1860, where an intellectual batttle led by the Italian Stanislao Cannizzarro (1826-1910) finally settled the question.

The experimental development of the concept of atomic weight begins with the study of gases. By the first decade of the 19th century chemists had produced and identified a variety of common gases, including hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine, ammonia, hydrogen chloride, among others. Through techniques pioneered by Lavoisier and refined by subsequent investigators, it was possible to measure quite precisely the volume and weight of gases. When water was decomposed, it could easily be shown that two gases were produced (named by Lavoisier hydrogen and oxygen), in the proportion of two volumes to one (Figure 1–Mendeleeff, Fig. 19, p. 114). By decomposing ammonia by the action of an electric spark, nitrogen and hydrogen gas was produced in the proportion of three volumes to one. Through a great number of experiments with different gases, Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac (1778-1850) came to the recognition known as his First Law: That the amounts of substances entering into chemical reaction occupy under similar physical conditions in a gaseous or vaporous state, equal or simple multiple volumes. This is also known as the law of combining volumes or the law of multiple proportions. It is a curious result, and hardly an obvious one, if you think about it.

It was also possible to weigh the gases,<fn. 1> and as hydrogen was by far the lightest, it was convenient to compare the weight of a gas to an equal volume of hydrogen. This ratio became known as the vapor density. For oxygen it was 16, for nitrogen 14, for ammonia 8.5, and for water vapour 9. These numbers, too, contained a paradox, for why should a quantity of ammonia, which contains nitrogen, and a quantity of water which contains oxygen, weigh less in proportion to hydrogen than an equivalent volume of the gases they contain? To answer the question, one must have a hypothesis about what a gas is.

Daniel Bernoulli, the son of Leibniz’s collaborator Johann, had proposed an idea in his 1738 book {Hydrodynamics,} which synthesized the research on atmospheric pressure and the pressure and volume relationships of gases that had been carried out by predecesors including Pascal, Torricelli, Mariotte, and Boyle. Bernoulli supposed that a gas, or elastic fluid as he called it, consisted of a great number of tiny, invisible particles which became agitated upon heating, and produced pressure by striking against the walls of its container. Bernoulli’s kinetic theory of gases became enormously important for physical chemistry in the 19th century, even though it was formalized by Clausius, Maxwell, and others into a doctrine (entropy) which was the very opposite of the thinking of its originator. <fn. 2>

Another paradox about the weight and volume of gases arises when we consider the composition of water. We noted that it can be easily shown that in the decomposition of water, two volumes of hydrogen are produced for every volume of oxygen. These gases may be brought back together into a mixture known as detonating gas. When this mixture of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen is ignited by a spark, an explosion occurs and the product is water. If that quantity of water be vaporized and brought back to the same temperature and pressure of the original gaseous ingredients, it is found that the two volumes of hydrogen plus one volume of oxygen have become two volumes of water vapor! Apparently, 2 + 1 = 2 in the world of water.

[In <fn. 3> I supply Mendeleeff’s description of the apparatus for carrying out this experiment. It is quite detailed, so continue reading, and return to it after you have finished.]

Whether this is paradoxical or not depends not only upon what we think is in the volume of gas, but how much. If we accept Bernoulli’s hypothesis that a gas consists of a great number of tiny, invisible particles, we have still not said how many they are. The first quantitative formulation on this account was proposed by the Italian chemist Count Amedeo Avogadro in a paper published in 1811. Looking at Gay-Lussac’s law and data from his own chemical researches, Avogadro hypothesized that at the same temperature and pressure, equal volumes of any two gases would contain the same number of particles, or molecules as they were coming to be called. His idea was not received with much interest. The only figure of note to embrace Avogadro’s idea, at first, was Andre-Marie Ampere, who was not very well known at the time. <fn. 4> In the 1840s, the French chemist Charles Frederic Gerhardt adopted Avogadro’s hypothesis and labored unceasingly to disprove all doubts concerning its truth. It finally won acceptance at the Karlsruhe Congress in 1860. By 1865, the key to finding the number of atoms or molecules contained in a cubic centimeter of any gas was determined by Josef Loschmidt, then an Austrian high school teacher. <fn. 5>

Employing Avogadro’s hypothesis, we can resolve the paradox of the composition of water, and discover another strange feature of the universe. If the composition of water, as suggested by the volumes obtained upon decomposition, be H20, then one volume of oxygen gas should unite with two volumes of hydrogen gas to produce one volume of the combined gas–H2O. Yet experiment shows the quantity of water vapor produced to be equal to two volumes. The paradox could only be resolved by assuming that the particles of both the hydrogen and the oxygen gas were twins, each consisting of two particles of hydrogen or oxygen. Thus, instead of H and O, the constitutent parts of the two gases must be H2 and O2. Avogadro called them compound molecules; today they are called diatomic molecules. Avogadro found that hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and chlorine were of this type and suspected there might be more. Upon detonation, the O2 molecules must break asunder each of the two pieces combining with two hydrogen atoms. Then the description of the formation of two volumes of water from a mixture of detonating gas containing two volumes of hydrogen and one volume of oxygen becomes: 2 H2 + O2 –> 2 H2O.

Avogadro’s conception of a diatomic molecule also served to unravel the paradox noted above concerning the vapor densities. The standard of reference for the vapour density was hydrogen gas, which we have come to see consists of diatomic molecules. Thus, a given volume of hydrogen gas will weigh twice what we would have expected, assuming the constitutents to be single atoms. Oxygen gas, as we have seen from the case of water, is also a diatomic molecule. Thus, the ratio of the weights of equal volumes of oxygen to hydrogen (the vapor density) will correspond to the true ratio of the weights of the atoms, if we assume with Avogadro that equal volumes of gases contain an equal number of constitutent molecules. We can see now, how important it was to establish Avogadro’s hypothesis. Once established, it allows us to infer the relative weights of tiny invisible atoms from the measured weights of large volumes of gases. If we assign the weight of 1 to an atom of hydrogen, we now know that an atom of oxygen will weigh 16. The weight of a molecule of water (H2O) is then 18. But a volume of water vapor weighs only 9 times as much as an equal volume of hydrogen gas, because the hydrogen is diatomic. Nitrogen, it turns out, is also a diatomic gas. Its vapor density of 14 thus denotes its true atomic weight. Ammonia (NH3) has a vapor density of 8.5 and not 17 because it is being compared to diatomic hydrogen gas.

Using Avogadro’s hypothesis, which was rigorously established by Gerhardt in the 1840s, it became possible to establish the atomic weights of a great number of substances, both naturally occurring gases and those substances which could be vaporized.<fn. 6> The unification of the practicing chemists of Europe around the Avogadro hypothesis, which was achieved by Cannizzaro at Karlsruhe in 1860, meant that all the data related to atomic weight could be systematized under one conception, and therefore under one system of measurement. One of the happy results of this achievement was the Periodic Table of the Elements devised by Mendeleeff as an investigation of the peculiar properties of the atomic weights, a topic we shall take up in a future treatment.

– Suggestions on Further Reading: –

I have found the best success in approach to these topics by beginning with a reading of Lavoisier’s {Principles of Chemistry} (available in a Dover paperback edition and as Vol. 45 of the Britannica {Great Books}). In a small weekly telephone meeting, begun about a year and-a-half ago with some interested youth, we completed the Lavoisier text in about 3 to 4 months; some independent experimentation was also carried out during the time. We followed that with a reading of Mendeleeff’s much longer textbook (cited below–parts being scanned in LA for greater access). This reading project is still ongoing. After an initial attempt to jump ahead to Chapter XV, which presents his discovery of the Periodic Table, we returned to page one, taking Mendeleeff’s own advice that a proper appreciation of his discovery requires a grounding in the descriptive and historical aspects of the subject.

NOTES:

(With apologies to Rachel Douglas, I employ the old-style transliteration (Mendeleeff) for consistency with the bibliographic references).

1. Mendeleeff writes in the introduction to his {Principles of Chemistry}: “Gases, like all other substances, may be weighed, but, owing to their extreme lightness and the difficulty of dealing with them in large masses, they can only be weighed on very sensitive balances; that is, on such as, with a considerable load, indicate a very small change in the weight–for example, a milligram in a load of 1,000 grams. In order to weigh a gas, a glass globe furnished with a tight-fitting stop-cock is first of all exhausted of air by an air-pump (a Sprengel pump is the best), after which the stop-cock is closed, and the exhausted globe weighed. If the gas to be weighed is then let into the globe, its weight can be determined from the increase in the weight of the globe. It is necessary, however, that the temperature and presure of the air about the balance should remain the same for both weighings, as the weight of the globe in air varies (according to the laws of hydrostatics) with the density of the latter. The volume of the air displaced, and its weight, must therefore be determined by observing the temperature, density, and moisture of the atmosphere during the time of the experiment. This will be partly explained later, but may be studied more in detail by physics. Owing to the complexity of all these operations, the mass of a gas is usually determined from its volume and its density, i.e. the weight of unit volume.” [D. Mendeleeff, {The Principles of Chemistry,} Third English Edition, translated from the Russian (Seventh Edition) by George Kamensky (London: Longmans Green, 1905) and (New York: Kraus Reprint, 1969), p. 10, note 17.]

2. D. Mendeleeff, op cit., pp. 346-348. Daniel Bernouli, extract from {Hydrodynamica} in Wm. Francis Magie, {A Sourcebook in Physics,} (Harvard Univ. Press, 1963) pp. 247-251. Taken together with Avogadro’s Law (to be explained shortly), the Bernoulli theory leads to the conclusion that under similar conditions of temperature and pressure, gas particles of different mass would each contain the same {vis viva} –the living force of Leibniz, which is measured as one half the product of mass into the square of velocity. The gaseous separation of isotopes, which is used to enrich uranium, makes use of this extension of Leibniz’s original discovery. Refined uranium, which consists of isotopes of two different weights, U-238 and U-235, is combined with fluorine into the gas uranium hexafluoride (UF6). As fluorine has an atomic weight of approximately 19, the hexafluoride gas must contain particles of two different masses, approximately (238 + (6 x 19)) and (235 + (6 x 19)). As the {vis viva} of the particles will be the same at a given temperature and pressure, the U-235-hexafluoride particles must move slightly faster than those of U-238. By pumping the gas through a membrane, a slightly greater concentration of the faster U-235-hexafluoride particles will pass through, and by repeating the process numerous times, separation is achieved.

3. Mendeleeff provides us a description of the apparatus for showing that 2 + 1 = 2 in the world of water. An understanding of the effect of atmospheric pressure on a column of liquid, as established by Pascal and Torricelli, will be necessary to fully comprehend this and all gas volume experiments. The student should be able to master these elementary concepts through self study. Reproducing Dr. Moon’s favorite experiment with atmospheric pressure, as pictured on page 44 of the Fall 2004 “Robert Moon” issue” of {21st Century Science,} will go a long way toward comprehension. Mendeleeff describes the apparatus as follows: “[T]he volume occupied by water, formed by two volumes of hydrogen and one volume of oxygen, may be determined by the aid of the apparatus shown in fig. 64 (Figure 2–from Mendeleef p. 325). The long glass tube is closed at the top and open at the bottom, which is immersed in a cylinder containing mercury. The closed end is furnished with wires like a eudiometer. The tube is filled with mercury, and then a certain volume of detonating gas is introduced. [The gas displaces the mercury being held up in the tube by the atmospheric pressure–LH.] This gas is obtained from the decomposition of water, and therefore, in every three volumes, contains two volumes of hydrogen and one volume of oxygen. The tube is surrounded by a second and wider glass tube, and the vapour of a substance boiling above 100 degrees–that is, whose boiling-point is higher than that of water–is passed through the annular space between them. Amyl alcohol, whose boiling-point is 132 degrees, may be taken for this purpose. The amyl alcohol is boiled in the vessel to the right hand and its vapour passed between the walls of the two tubes. In the case of amyl alcohol the outer glass tube should be connected with a condenser to prevent the escape into the air of the unpleasant-smelling vapour. [In the apparatus pictured the outer glass tube is not connected with a condenser; thus, the puff at the top of the tube is not steam as unfortunately suggested by the caption–LH.] The detonating gas is thus heated up to a temperature of 132 degrees. When its volume becomes constant it is measured, the height of the column of mercury in the tube above the level of the mercury in the cylinder being noted. Let this volume equal {v}; it will therefore contain 1/3 {v} of oxygen and 2/3 {v} of hydrogen. The current of vapour is then stopped and the gas exploded; water is formed, which condenses into a liquid. The volume occupied by the vapour of the water formed has now to be determined. For this purpose the vapour of the amyl alcohol is again passed between the tubes, and thus the whole of the water formed is converted into vapour at the same temperature as that at which the detonating gas was measured; and the cylinder of mercury being raised until the column of mercury in the tube stands at the same height above the surface of the mercury in the cylinder as it did before the explosion [that is, the atmospheric presure in the tube is now the same as before–LH] it is found that the volume of the water formed is equal to 2/3 {v,} that is, it is equal to the volume of the hydrogen contained in it. Consequently the volumetric composition of water is expressed in the following terms: Two volumes of hydrogen combine with one volume of oxygen to form two volumes of aqueous vapour.” [Mendeleeff, op. cit., pp. 325-326]

4. Amedeo Avogadro, “Essay on a Manner of Determining the Relative Masses of the Elementary Molecules of Bodies, and the Proportions in Which They Enter into These Compounds,” {Journal de Physique} 73, 58-76 (1811) [Alembic Club Reprint No. 4] http://web.lemoyne.edu/~GIUNTA/avogadro.html

Andre-Marie Ampere “Lettre de M. Ampere a M. le comte Berthollet, sur la determination des proportions dans lesquelles les corps se combinent d’apres le nombre et la disposition respective des molecules dont leurs particules integrantes sont composees,” {Annales de Chimie,} Tome 90, (30 April 1814) pp. 43-86; 2 planches. Ampere suggests a new series of tetrahedral-based polyhedra which, he suggests, would be the shapes taken by definite compounds.

5. Avogadro’s Number is the number of atoms or molecules of a gas contained in a volume of 22.4 liters at standard temperature and pressure; this volume is used as a reference because it is the volume of a container of hydrogen gas weighing 2 grams. The number of molecules of any gas fitting into such a container at a standard temperature and pressure was determined to be 6.02 x 10 to the 23rd power. This is 602 sextillion molecules, using the American system for naming large numbers, and quite a few by anybody’s count. In a high vacuum of one billionth of an atmosphere, achievable in a laboratory, there remain more than ten billion molecules. Even the so-called vacuum of space is never empty–only less densely populated than other places.

6. Following is the description by Mendeleeff of a method of determining the vapour density of substances which are liquid or solid at ordinary temperature. The method implies knowledge of the relationship of pressure, volume and temperature of gases. Study of the description and diagrams will help the reader to conceptualize the experimental process in working with gases. A study of Lavoisier’s work will help to make the subject clear: “The method by weight is the most trustworthy and historically important. Dumas’ method is typical. An ordinary spherical glass or porcelain vessel, like those shown respectively in figs. 60 and 61 (Figure 3–Mendeleeff p. 321), is taken, and an excess of the substance to be experimented upon is introduced into it. The vessel is heated to a temperature {t} degrees, higher than the boiling-point of the liquid; this gives a vapour which displaces the air, and fills the spherical space. When the air and vapour cease escaping from the sphere, the latter is fused up or closed by some means; and when cool, the weight of the vapour remaining in the sphere is determined (either by direct weighing of the vessel with the vapour and introducing the necessary corrections for the weight of the air and of the vapour itself, or by determining the weight of the volatilised substance by chemical methods), and the volume of the vapour at {t} and at the barometric pressure {h} are then calculated.” [Mendeleeff, op. cit., p. 323 n.]

SCHILLER INSTITUTE Partial List of Pedagogical Articles on www.schillerinstitute.org

On the Schiller Institute  pedagogical page you will find a partial listing of some pedagogical exercises, designed to help break through the handicap of “sense-certainty”, the unfortunate perspective from which most people view the world these days. If you would like more information on the classes and discussions in your area about this, please call, or email us at the address below.

You will find related material if you read the original translations of the works of great thinkers. Please check the full listing of FIDELIO articles, for articles on many other topics not listed below.

Click or scroll down to Schiller Institute translations of the poems, Archimedes and the Student. and Human Knowledge by Friedrich Schiller. Below that you will find a short excerpt from Lyndon LaRouche on the relationship between Music and Science.

Find all this by following this link: Schiller Institute

On Public Debt

Treasury Department,
November 30, 1792.

In obedience to two resolutions of the House of Representatives: one of the 21st instant, directing the Secretary of the Treasury to report a plan for the redemption of so much of the public debt as, by the act entitled “An act making provision for the debt of the United States,” the United States have reserved the right to redeem; the other of the 22d instant, directing him to report the plan of a provision for the reimbursement of a loan, made of the Bank of the United States, pursuant to the eleventh section of the act entitled “An act to incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of the United States,” the said Secretary respectfully submits the following report: Continue reading On Public Debt

Report on Manufactures

Communicated to the House of Representatives,

December 5, 1791.

The Secretary of the Treasury, in obedience to the order of the House of Representatives, of the 15th day of January, 1790, has applied his attention, at as early a period as his other duties would permit, to the subject of Manufactures, and particularly to the means of promoting such as will tend to render the United States independent on foreign nations for military and other essential supplies; and he thereupon respectfully submits the following report: Continue reading Report on Manufactures

Report on a National Bank

Communicated to the House of Representatives, December 14, 1790

Treasury Department,

December 13, 1790.

In obedience to the order of the House of Representatives of the ninth day of August last, requiring the Secretary of the Treasury to prepare and report on this day such further provision as may, in his opinion, be necessary for establishing the public credit, the said Secretary further respectfully reports:

That, from a conviction (as suggested in his report herewith presented1) that a national bank is an institution of primary importance to the prosperous administration of the finances, and would be of the greatest utility in the operations connected with the support of the public credit, his attention has been drawn to devising the plan of such an institution, upon a scale which will entitle it to the confidence, and be likely to render it equal to the exigencies, of the public. Continue reading Report on a National Bank

On the Establishment of a Mint

Communicated to the House of Representatives,

January 28, 1791.

The Secretary of the Treasury having attentively considered the subject referred to him by the order [4]of the House of Representatives, of the fifteenth of April last, relatively to the establishment of a mint, most respectfully submits the result of his inquiries and reflections.
Continue reading On the Establishment of a Mint

First Report on the Public Credit

Communicated to the House of Representatives,

January 14, 1790.

Treasury Department,

January 9, 1790.

The Secretary of the Treasury, in obedience to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the twenty-first day of September last, has, during the recess of Congress, applied himself to the consideration of a proper plan for the support of the public credit, with all the attention which was due to the authority of the House, and to the magnitude of the object.

In the discharge of this duty, he has felt, in no small degree, the anxieties which naturally flow from a just estimate of the difficulty of the task, from a well-founded diffidence of his own qualifications for executing it with success, and from a deep and solemn conviction of the momentous nature of the truth contained in the resolution under which his investigations have been conducted,—“That an adequate provision for the support of the public credit is a matter of high importance to the honor and prosperity of the United States.”

With an ardent desire that his well-meant endeavors may be conducive to the real advantage of [228] the nation, and with the utmost deference to the superior judgment of the House, he now respectfully submits the result of his inquiries and reflections to their indulgent construction. Continue reading First Report on the Public Credit

Bering Strait Tunnel, Alaska-Canada Rail Infrastructure Corridors Will Transform Economy

by Richard Freeman and Dr. Hal Cooper

EIR / PDF (EIR)-The adoption and construction of the Bering Strait rail and tunnel project is the focus of a Schiller Institute conference in Kiedrich, Germany on Sept. 15-16, bringing together international experts and political activists to mobilize for this program, which will bring about a technological upshift in the economy globally. The infrastructure corridors built around the rail lines will help generate, through their bills of materials, a renaissance in manufacturing and infrastructure in the United States, as well as Canada. The Bering Strait project would link, by hoops of steel, the entirety of the Americas to the entirety of Eurasia, with the potential to connect to Africa. It would replace the world’s slow, outmoded, and vastly overburdened sea-rail routes with a geodesic high-speed-rail route. The system would use high- speed electric rail, and shift as quickly as possible to magnetic levitation rail. This would free the world forever from hundreds of billions of dollars spent on petroleum-driven transport, while doubling or tripling the speed of transport of people and freight. For example, goods produced in the American Midwest could be transported to China, or Russia, in 7-10 days, rather than the three weeks it presently takes by a combination of sea and rail. As a leading vector for enabling a World Land-Bridge, the Bering Strait project would facilitate the proliferation of rail-spined development corridors of high economic growth, ending the Third World’s enforced backwardness and death. A critical feature of the overall Bering Strait project, would be the development of a 3,030-mile Alaska-Canada rail connector, which will contribute to moving the U.S. and Canadian physical economies from a deepening collapse process of several decades, onto an alternative path of growth. Building 3,030 miles of track—and double that amount if the system is double-tracked—demands a tremendous quantity of goods, expressed as a bill of materials. This is an ordered array of goods—steel for tracks and for railroad bridges; wood for ties and railroad structures; cement for culverts and other structures; aggregates for cement manufacture, but also for roadbed, etc. The bill of materials for the Alaska-Canada rail connector will require the production of tens of millions of tons of goods. This will create 35,000 to 50,000 jobs in the building of the railroad, plus workers in the factories producing the steel, cement, copper and aluminum wire, power plants, locomotives, and other necessary components. But that is just the first phase. In the second phase, potentially, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be generated. On June 2, Fred Stakelbeck, of the Center for Security Studies, published a blistering attack on the project: “What do Russian President Vladmir Putin, spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, political activist Lyndon LaRouche, and former . . . Governor of Alaska Walter Hickel have in common? They are all supporters of the Bering Strait Tunnel Project.” The Wall Street Journal said the project would “soak the American taxpayer.” But economist LaRouche has shown just the opposite: Hamiltonian long-term, low-interest financing will bring the project into realization. The confluence of the project’s generation of technology and productivity worldwide, the development corridors, and the bill of materials will produce a several-fold increase of physical-economic activity, and an increase in tax revenue. It will pay for itself several times over. The adoption of LaRouche’s New Bretton Woods monetary system is the context in which the project would come into existence.

A Critical Rail Network

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figure 1. The Alaska Railroad

To appreciate what must be done, we can first look at the state of rail, and transportation in general, in the Great North region comprised of Alaska; the Yukon Territory of Canada; and the northern tier of British Columbia, Canada. To say that this area is underdeveloped, is like saying that the Sahara Desert is dry. Figure 1 shows the Alaska Railroad, which was built in 1914-23, by the U.S. government, and has been, since 1985, owned by the Alaska state government. The Alaska Railroad, which extends from Fairbanks to Anchorage, covers 544 miles (876 kilometers), counting spur lines. It is a small, isolated system in the vastness of Alaska’s 663,267 square miles (1,717,855 square kilometers). The map shows that, by rail, there is currently neither a passage to reach Fairbanks from the Lower 48 U.S. states, nor a way to get from that city to the Bering Strait. The Alaska-Canada (Alcan) Highway, which was built under President Franklin Roosevelt’s direction in 1942, extends from the Lower 48 states to Fairbanks, but goes no further west. To reach the Bering Strait by overland passage, short of using a snowmobile fortified with extra cans of gasoline, one must resort to huskies pulling a dog sled! The Yukon Territory has only a tiny rail line. The North American rail grid that joins Mexico, the United States, and Canada, comes to a dead-end stop at the northern tier of British Columbia. The Arctic North region is underpopulated, and its development frozen in time.

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figure 2.

The Alaska-Canada rail connector, with the construction of a development corridor extending 50 miles (80 km) on each side of the railroad, can transform the region in its entirety. Power lines, fiber-optic lines, and where necessary, freshwater pipes would be encased within the corridor. Cities, population, manufacturing, and scientific agriculture would be fertilized and harvested in this corridor as well. The Arctic North’s nearby abundant, but largely untapped, mineral and raw material resources would be made accessible, by rail link, out of the frigid ground for rational use in the Arctic North and the world.

Overcoming a Transportation Dark Age

Figure 2 shows the plan for an Alaska-Canada rail connector system, as developed by co-author Dr. Hal Cooper, a consulting engineer.# This proposed system starts off with two route-branches, each of which heads in a north-south direction. The first branch, called the westerly one, starts at Prince George, British Columbia, and proceeds to Chipmunk, B.C., to Dease Lake, B.C., to Jake’s Corner, Yukon Territory, and then to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. The second branch, called the easterly one, starts at Prince George, also. It then heads to Dawson Creek, B.C., to Fort St. John, B.C., to Fort Nelson, B.C., to Watson Lake, Yukon Territory, to Jake’s Corner, and then to Whitehorse. Both branches should be built. The two branches join at Jake’s Corner, which is in proximity to the larger Whitehorse. The rail connector line would then extend, as a single route, northward to Beaver Creek in the Yukon Territory, at the Alaska-Canada border, and then to Fairbanks. From there it would proceed to Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, which lies across the Bering Strait from Uelen, Russia. The Bering Strait tunnel would link Cape Prince of Wales to Uelen. Spanning off from this main line, two spur lines would be constructed—the first heading toward Nome, the second toward Red Dog, and then to Point Lay. This second spur would be a critical route, linking existing and projected mines in Alaska to the main line. Red Dog is the site of a massive Alaskan mine, currently the world’s largest producer of zinc; it also produces sizeable amounts of lead and gold. This rail system has two features to be noted. First, Prince George is a location where the North American rail grid nearly comes to an end. Starting in Prince George, the rail routes have been built out to Chipmunk and to Fort Nelson on the westerly and easterly branches, respectively. Both rail sections are owned by the Canadian National Railroad. But some of the rail line to Chipmunk has already been torn up, and both lines would require substantial repair and upgrade as part of the

Alaska-Canada rail connector plan.

Second, by building the Alaska-Canada rail connector, we create the ability to move goods from Russia and China, as well as from Central Asia, Southwest Asia, and Europe, directly to the North American rail grid, and thus to the United States. The westerly branch would extend the system’s reach due south to Vancouver, British Columbia; Seattle, Washington; and then to major cities in California. The easterly branch would enable goods to travel either from Fort Nelson to Chicago, or from Dawson Creek to North Dakota, and then to a projected rail corridor to Texas.

An Immense Bill of Materials

Keeping the physical topology, and size of the railroad in mind, we can work up an approximate bill of materials. There are two prerequisite steps in all rail construction, prior to laying a single mile of track. First, a comprehensive engineering survey must be conducted on the path and terrain on which the rail would be built, a process that Cooper and a few others have carried out. Second, the area must be graded, across mountains and low-lying areas. This would require bulldozers and earth-moving equipment, etc. Then building can begin. In assessing a bill of materials, what the industry calls “unit factors,” that is, how many tons of specific goods are needed, per mile of track to be constructed, must be considered. These factors are approximate: In any particular several-mile-stretch of track, one may need more special materials to build on permafrost; one may need more of certain materials for extra strengthening of the track or to build more culverts; or one may need more wood or concrete to build protective walls and sheds, to protect the line from Winter weather.

Table 1 gives the unit factors for building a single mile of railroad track that is double-tracked, and where electric locomotives will be used. “Double-tracking” means that trains can run in each direction at the same time. An electric locomotive uses no diesel fuel, and is powered 100% by electricity supplied by over-head wires. This requires construction of power plants, transmission lines, overhead wires, poles, etc. All of this must be accounted for in the bill of materials. The total length of the Alaska-Canada rail corridor, including spur lines, as displayed in Figure 2, is approximately 3,030 miles. Using four different unit factors, it was possible to determine an approximate bill of materials for four different types of rail line that would be constructed: a single-track diesel-electric-hybrid locomotive; a single-track electric locomotive; a double-track diesel-electric-hybrid locomotive; and a double-track electric locomotive. (On average, the “factor” for a double-track electric locomotive system is roughly double that for a single-track electric locomotive system, although there is some economy of scale.

The same holds for the comparable types of diesel-electric- locomotive systems). Table 2 presents, for construction of each of the four types of system, the approximate tonnage required, by type of commodity. Notice that construction of a double-track electric locomotive system would require a huge bill of materials: more than 10 million tons of iron and steel; nearly 10 million tons of cement, aggregates, etc.; more than 1 million tons of copper, aluminum, and steel wire. Cooper estimates that, at the beginning, because the total tonnage of freight to be carried by each train would be relatively smaller, the the Alaska-Canada rail corridor system may start out as a single-track diesel-electric hybrid locomotive system; but, as the Bering Strait tunnel is built, sending through a greater volume of freight traffic, a double-tracked electric locomotive system would be built. Engineers estimate that it would require 10 to 12 years to build the Bering Strait tunnel. However, with foresight and strong support by the United States government, the Alaska-Canada rail connector could start out as a double-tracked electric locomotive system. It would move as quickly as possible to a maglev system.

An Expansion of Employment

The process of constructing and operating a double-tracked electric locomotive system would generate a significant number of new jobs. It would require 7,500 to 12,800 full-time equivalent jobs to construct the railroad itself, and 1,800 to 2,300 workers to operate and provide maintenance to the railroad, once it is constructed. There is also indirect employment: An additional 15,000 to 25,600 jobs would be created, to produce the steel, cement, copper and aluminum wire, specified in the bill of materials in Table 2. The project would also require engineering and other services. Adding together the direct and indirect jobs, the corridor project would create between 24,300 and 40,700 new jobs, a goodly percentage of them productive. There is more to this process. The Alaska-Canada Railway connector corridor will ultimately employ electrified rail: first high-speed (electric locomotive) rail and then magnetic levitation. This will require huge amounts of electricity, and mandate construction of a series of regional power plants to supply electricity to the railroad operation itself, plus for regional economic and industrial development. The requirement would be, conservatively, 3,000-6,000 megawatts of new installed electricity-generating capacity by 2050. Nuclear power would be the optimal means to supply the power. The bill of materials presented in Table 2 was restricted primarily to the building phase of the railroad, and did not include that power requirement. Table 3 documents the bill of materials to produce a 1,200 MW power plant (construction of four paired 300 MW plants, such as four pebble bed modular reactors, would require roughly the same bill of materials). Now, think of all the workers who would be needed to build the hundreds of pumps, heat exchangers, compressors, reactor vessels, etc., and the inter-mediate goods and raw materials, such as steel (see Marsha Freeman, “The Auto Industry Can Help Build New Nuclear Plants, ” EIR, Dec. 20, 2005). This Alaska-Canada rail corridor would require the manufacture of a new fleet of thousands of electric locomotives, flat cars, hopper cars, and fuel transport cars. This engenders its own bill of materials, and the creation of new jobs. Given the collapsed condition of U.S. rail manufacture, we must immediately reopen and convert a number of closed auto factories, to produce rail capital goods. Laid-off skilled auto workers would be rehired. In sum, adding up all the jobs cited above, the Alaska-Canada rail corridor would generate a new workforce of 35,000-50,000 workers, in largely productive jobs. But this is just the first phase.

Global Development

The Alaska-Canada railroad corridor, contemporaneous with the construction of a rail corridor from the Baikal Amur Mainline to Uelen, Russia—both leading vectors of the Bering Strait project—would bring about a profound and enduring change in the world economy. This would generate a second, much larger phase of jobs.
Table 3.
The Bering Strait rail and tunnel project’s path is fast, both because it utilizes revolutionary high-speed/maglev technology, and because it operates along a least-action, geodesic Arctic Circle route. The shortest distance and fastest passage for goods from Beijing to Chicago is along this proposed route. Were the current mode of transport to be used to ship a product from Beijing to Chicago, it would go by train from Beijing to a Chinese port, broken down, and placed on a ship travelling at a much slower speed across the Pacific Ocean; be offloaded at the Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach, and placed upon a train for shipment to Chicago. That process takes up to three weeks. By the Bering Strait route, it would stay on high- speed train the whole way, travel along a much shorter route, and take 7 to 10 days.
A primary function of the Bering Strait rail system is to unlock of the vast treasure-house of varied elements of the Periodic Table trapped underneath the tundra and permafrost of the Arctic North, which consists of Russia’s Far East, Alaska, the Yukon Territory, and the northern two-thirds of British Columbia. These mineral resources can be used for world economic development. The rail project, as part of what will become the World Land-Bridge, would also build development corridors in underdeveloped regions of the world, including the Arctic North.
The case of Russia in this setting is developed by Rachel Douglas in “Russia: Contours of an Economic Policy to Save the Nation,” EIR, Sept. 7, 2007), so we will focus on the other regions of the Arctic North. The case of Alaska illustrates how the development of resources can contribute to igniting overall development. Alaska has almost no manufacturing: not a single steel plant, and only a few small machine-tool shops; it imports most of its industrial goods from the Lower 48 states or Asia. Sitting on a submerged mountain of raw materials, it has but seven mines of any significance in operation. Yet, according to independent geologists and the U.S. Geological Survey, Alaska has a teeming resource base of iron ore, zinc, lead, copper, molybdenum, uranium, titanium, chromite, nickel, gold, platinum, and coal. (Russia’s Far East province has an equal or even greater supply of these and other raw materials.) A mining engineer told EIR, “Some financial people tell you that transportation has nothing to do with developing a mine, but they are totally wrong. If you don’t have transportation, you can’t ship the goods anywhere.” According to a study by University of Alaska at Fairbanks mining and geological engineer Dr. Paul Metz, Alaska has more than 500 “mineral occurrences”—sites where deposits of specific minerals have been identified—which fall within 60 miles on either side of the center line of the proposed Alaska- Canada rail connector. With rail, he indicated, several of these occurrences, perhaps dozens if they are rich enough, would become operating mines. The development of mines calls for capital equipment and other supplies, but that is just the first step. Many in Alaska want to develop a manufacturing base. There are already plans to construct a petroleum refining facility outside the city of Fairbanks, Alaska’s largest, not only for producing refined product, but also for feedstock. There is also discussion of building metal-ore-processing and -refining plants, such as for zinc and copper, and of building initially one steel plant that would utilize iron ore from Alaska and neighboring Yukon Territory. These plans require railroads to transport the goods. The Alaska-Canada rail connector, with 50 miles on either side, would be a development corridor within which new cities would be built and existing small cities would grow, following the general trajectory of the 19th-Century Transcontinental Railroad in the United States. Right now, three-quarters of Alaska’s small population (670,000 people) is concentrated in just two areas: the metropolitan areas around Fairbanks and Anchorage, in the southern part of the state. The rest of the state is virtually empty. As cities spring up or enlarge, they will build manufacturing establishments, and require con- struction of school systems, electricity grids, water systems, health and hospital systems; this will of course require an expansion of the workforce. For the short-term future, Alaska would import a host of advanced goods, in particular machine tools, principally from the Lower 48 states. Thus, as a second phase, over the next 20 to 25 years, this self-feeding process would create hundreds of thousands of jobs, most of them in Alaska and the continental United States, many of them productive.

Alaska’s population density of a mere 1.0 person per square mile (0.4 persons per square kilometer) is a measure of pitiful underdevelopment. Table 4 shows the population densities for some regions, illustrating the underdevelopment of the Arctic North. The construction of the Alaska- Canada rail connector corridor will foster an increase in potential relative population density: that areas once thought to be barren—such as vast areas of snow and permafrost—will become fecund, through scientific agriculture (including the hot-house production of food), the technological- and capital-intensiveness of manufacturing, and the productive powers of labor. Through creativity, man will increase his productive power over the universe, per capita, and per square kilometer. At a higher level, the movement of goods between Eurasia and the Americas, at previously unheard-of speeds, will transform world productive relations. It will cohere with an emerging isotope economy, and generate tens of millions of productive jobs in the United States, and hundreds of millions worldwide. The regeneration of the world economy, which would be achieved through U.S.-Russian collaboration, would shift the relations between the two nations to a positive, war-avoidance footing. The forceful implementation of Lyndon LaRouche’s New Bretton Woods monetary system, as the present financial system blows to pieces, creates the unique historical moment to bring the Bering Strait project into existence.

La Victoire de Kesha

Brèves /
Victoire de la larouchiste Kesha Rogers au Texas
3 mars 2010 – 13:59

3 mars 2010 (Nouvelle Solidarité)—La larouchiste Kesha Rogers a emporté la nuit dernière, la primaire démocrate pour la Chambre des représentants, dans le 22ème district du Texas. Elle l’a emporté largement avec 52.3% (7465 voix sur 14277 démocrates votant), laissant ses adversaires loin derrière avec 27.7% pour Doug Blatt (candidat soutenu par toute la hiérarchie démocrate locale) et 20% pour John Wielder.

Kesha Rogers avait fait campagne pour la destitution d’Obama, l’application du plan LaRouche pour sortir de la crise, et la défense de la NASA et de ses vols spatiaux habités qu’Obama prévoit de supprimer.

Le Plan Larouche pour sortir de la crise prévoit la mise en redressement judiciaire de banques spéculatives, le retour à la loi Glass Steagall qui établit une séparation étanche entre les banques d’affaires spéculatives et les banques de dépôt, et la réorientation des capitaux vers de grands projets d’infrastructures de haute technologie, fortement créateurs d’emplois et de richesses.

Lyndon LaRouche appelle aussi à un accord de 4 puissances – Russie, Inde, Chine et Etats-Unis – pour mener à bien cette réorganisation du système monétaire international et créer un nouveau système de Bretton Woods.

Quelles sont les raisons d’une victoire aussi éclatante ? Au cours d’une interview hier soir, Kesha Rogers estimait que la population avait réagi favorablement a un leadership déterminé à prendre les mesures qui s’imposent, dans ce temps de crise aigüe, pour la défense des populations et non des banques. C’est ce « leadership », à la Franklin Roosevelt, que la direction actuelle du Parti démocrate, trop corrompue, n’est pas en mesure de fournir.

Kesha Rogers compte se consacrer à la construction d’un mouvement de jeunes à l’échelle nationale pour pouvoir changer la donne aux États-Unis. Elle sera donc la candidate du Parti démocrate pour les élections du 2 novembre prochain face au républicain sortant Pete Olson.

Micheal Ignatieff: Queen’s Knight

In December 2008, Canadians witnessed, not only an embarrassing example of the embedded flaws in our British-inspired Parliamentary system, but more fundamentally, they saw, many for the first time, the exercise of power over our country’s internal affairs by Canada’s sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II.

Illusions held by most Canadians regarding the “symbolic” nature of the monarchy began falling by the wayside. Questions also arose as to the real independence ofCanada within the Commonwealth (the Empire under financial globalization).In November of that year the financial system had entered a new accelerated phase of collapse, and a first $700 billion bailout for U.S. banks passed the United States Congress. That very same month an unannounced, disguised, $64 billion bailout of the Canadian banking system occurred!

We are living through a tumultuous economic period that requires inspired leadership and an historical model of the stature of a Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In Canada, a lack of leadership in dealing with the economic crisis was compounded by the three opposition parties hastily putting together a plan to form an alternative Canadian coalition government… if the Queen’s representative, the Governor General, would of course, kindly give her ascent! The Liberals, according to this arrangement, were to govern the country with the support of the NDP and Bloc Québécois.

In the following two days, Canadian citizens watched while one group was pitifully begging the Queen’s Governor General to allow them to take over the nation, while the other group was begging this unelected royal appendage, to let them stay in power.

At that time, the overthrow of the Conservative government did not proceed as planned, and the Conservatives were permitted to remain in power for another year, while Michael Ignatieff became the new head of the Liberal Party of Canada in the interim, breaking off all ties with his former coalition allies.

We are now in early 2010 and time is certainly running out for Michael Ignatieff to assume his assigned role as the knight on a white horse who shall come to the rescue of the nation already deep into the onslaught of a global economic meltdown. Prime Minister Harper’s government has proven itself ineffective in combating the high rate of unemployment and has mainly opted for austerity rather than producing our way out of this economic meltdown.

First on the chopping block is Atomic Energy Canada Limited which is scheduled to be auctioned off to foreign interests. This folly would penalize Canadians 1) by cutting them off from the only truly efficient energy source, 2) by dismantling the scientific and technological knowledge required to get to the next stage which is thermonuclear fusion energy, and 3) by preventing the qualitative transformation of the Canadian economy into a future advanced isotope economy.

The Canadian population, up to this very recent period, has had to suffer the injury of more and more frequent ‘horse trading’ sessions on the floor of the House of Commons amidst the ever present blackmail threats to force yet another national election. And now, the government is adding insult to injury with its decision to prorogue Parliament.

It would do well for all Canadians to understand that it is quite feasible to step outside this political chessboard and its set piece tactics and think strategically, as a Franklin Roosevelt would, as he constantly educated his fellow citizens during his speeches and famous fireside chats during the Great Depression and throughout the course of World War II; or as Lyndon LaRouche is known to do today—by exposing the inner workings of the present day globalized financial British Empire and how to defeat it by organizing a political dynamic which would 1) bring together a Four Power Alliance (of Russia, India, China and the United States) to defeat the monetarist imperial power which has chosen the financial district of London as a base from which its tentacles reach out internationally and, 2) get other sovereign nation-states interested in joining the initiating Four Power Alliance in order to form a new world-wide credit system as set out in the LaRouche Plan.

It is with this perspective in our mind’s eye that we must judge the leadership qualities and moral character of Michael Ignatieff. If he were to be elected Prime Minister of Canada, he would immediately be confronted with the challenge of getting Canada to break with British monetarist policies and join a new and exciting Pacific Basin oriented political dynamic.

Who is Michael Ignatieff?

It is therefore well worth examining if Michael Ignatieff’s principles and intentions are truly as noble as they are summarily portrayed in his self-promoting book “True Patriot Love”?(1)

Is he truly a Canadian patriot who, in the midst of an onrushing global financial meltdown, felt impelled to return to his endangered homeland to pull it out of economic turbulence and propel it into an era of genuine prosperity by getting Canada to eventually join a community of principle of nations desiring to establish a more just new world economic order?

In looking into Ignatieff’s philosophy, opinions, public statements and policies, one is immediately struck by the fact that he is a master at taking every side to most every issue.

On policy questions Ignatieff seems to be for infrastructure, for long-term investments, for cleaner tar sands, for high-speed rail between Quebec City and Vancouver, along with a four-lane highway; all fine proposals but his widely known advocacy for a carbon tax, and for a green economy contradict his ability to realize the above proposals.

Ignatieff references the Roosevelt New Deal example when discussing Canadian development projects or extensions to the Canadian unemployment insurance program. Yet when one examines how he intends to finance these FDR policies, all one finds is discussions of more free markets, more taxes and the elimination of all national protectionist measures (2) –the very antithesis of Roosevelt’s policies.

Ignatieff uses rhetoric in the same vein as Barack Obama and has taken a leaf from Obama’s presidential campaign by staying as far away as possible from committing to any tangible policy for which he would be held accountable later. Ignatieff’s bipartisan magic even surprised his liberal entourage when he received a standing ovation after he had spoken at the very conservative Fraser Institute.

He is self-portrayed as a pacifist-intellectual, and yet, he is also a frantic supporter of military interventions into small nations. He has singled out in his published writings the cases of Kosovo, (1996), Algeria, (1999) and Iraq (2002).

He swiftly defends his viewpoint by taking both the “for” and “against” side on every issue, as witnessed by his support of Cheney’s torture policies which he now defends as having done so with “right principles”. When questioned on one particular incident of indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon in 2006, which killed 56 civilians, he responded coldly with; “This is the kind of dirty war you’re in when you have to do this and I’m not losing sleep about that.” A week later, when confronted again on his statement, Ignatieff denied the statement and chastised Israel saying that it should be “punished for war crimes”.

Today, he is the leading liberal advocate of Steven Harper’s expanded militarization of Afghanistan. Ignatieff was a leading architect in the 2004 policy for a UN supranational police force “The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Protocol”. His commitment to a necessary imperialism is sophistically presented in his recent book ‘Empire Lite’ and Times article ‘The Burden’.

It is within this context that the ‘nature of the beast’ becomes clear. The character of a man who takes both sides to every issue is that he is either confused or a liar. In the case of Mr. Ignatieff, we can presume he will not admit to confusion.

What clearly emerges is a world view that parallels the oligarchical mindset: where nations are often broken-up into smaller ‘sovereign’ entities who are at the mercy of an overreaching international structure controlled ultimately by British imperial finance.

Such a world dictatorship, with a liberal face, has to rely on key components which are already deployed in several instances such as: 1-private international criminal courts (such as the ICC), 2-militarized private police forces operating outside the constraints of sovereign nations, 3-increased private control of national finances to impose austerity 4-reducing subject nations to accept genocidal levels of ‘conditionalities’ in order to refinance inflated debts, on top of 5- an international carbon taxing body, as proposed and rejected (for now) at Copenhagen, that would police and prohibit the development of new science and technology for industrial production.

In this brave new world run by a technocratic Malthusian elite, personal and collective freedoms are to be severely curtailed on a ‘voluntary’ basis by inducing irrational fears among the population through 1) the control of so-called ‘Islamic’ terrorism which is for the most part run out of Londonistan and 2) the acceptance of depopulation and deindustrialization policies under the guise of saving the planet from man-made (read industries) global warming!

Family Baggage

Michael Ignatieff’s conspicuous family history was highlighted by Ignatieff himself during his short meteoric rise through the highest echelons of Canadian politics.

Even earlier, in a 1993 interview(3), Ignatieff expressed pride in a radio host’s acknowledgement of his title “Count”, a title he inherited from his Great Grandfather Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev.

One can imagine a private discussion among two elder British aristocrats in a London private club

-‘’Good genes, good blood line, Russian nobility…’’.

–‘’…Most important, that family has rendered faithful, high-level services to the Empire, while a Minister to the Tsar’’

-‘’…We must not forget the maternal side: his great-grandfather was Sir George Parkin who ran the Rhodes Trust in London for over two decades. Only Canadian ever to be entrusted with that sensitive position, I do say. The family married into the Masseys, his great-aunt was the wife of one our most effective Governor General up there. Both Parkin and later Massey were key in setting up and recruiting the first two generations of members to our Round Table Movement in the Dominion…’’

-‘’…I’ll pass the chaps’ pedigree on to the relevant people in the City…’’

Nikolai Pavlovich’s notoriety, for our current interest here, comes from the key role he played in the formation of the Okhrana (the Russia secret police). It was this institution which was instrumental in fomenting the 1905 Russian Revolution, and the later 1918 Bolshevik Revolution (4) on behalf of the British. At the turn of the century, Russia was specifically targeted for chaos by the British Empire as a response to the Russian followers of Abraham Lincoln’s policies, like Prime Minister Sergei Witte (5) and the great scientist Dmitri Mendeleyev (6). Those policies most strongly defining the fight were the Trans-Siberian rail project, national banking and ‘American System’ protectionism. The prospect of a Russian-US collaborative effort to build the great Bering Strait Tunnel-rail network stems from this time in history, and is still an ongoing threat to the British imperial stranglehold today.

While Ignatieff’s grandfather Paul Ignatiev went on to become the Education Minister under Tsar Nicholas II, the second major revolution was sparked, and Paul Ignatieff’s career in Russia was soon terminated. It is interesting to note though that Ignatieff’s grandfather was one of but a small handful of tsarist figures permitted to escape death at that point. The family promptly migrated to Canada.

Before looking at Michael Ignatieff’s father, it is necessary that we first briefly set the stage of post war British geopolitics. The Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine for organizing the post World War II “Balance of Power’’ was designed by the British to destroy all cooperation between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. As after the British-instigated American Civil War, the primary targets were again victims of British manipulations which took the form of a Cold War (7).

After being granted a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford in 1940, Michael Ignatieff’s father, George Ignatieff, quickly rose to become a leading international figure: Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations, Permanent Representative to NATO, President of the United Nations Security Council.

Prime Minister John Turner, in 1984, appointed George Ignatieff Disarmament Ambassador. From this position, George Ignatieff became instrumental in destroying President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)(8), conceptually developed by Lyndon LaRouche to defeat the Cold War MAD strategy and to set in motion a new era of American-U.S.S.R. scientific and economic cooperation for world development.

George Ignatieff was a strong proponent 1) of consolidating a global UN police force, 2) of advocating the Russell idea of world government and 3) of implementing global prohibitions on nuclear energy development. While not hereditary, this oligarchical mindset has tragically been passed on from father to son.

His home and native land:

“My final journey took me back to consider the braying national identity of my adopted country- the British Isles” –Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging.

While born in Canada in 1949, Michael Ignatieff’s anglophilia brought him to live and teach in Britain for over 20 years.

In 1979, Michael Ignatieff’s service to the Empire originated from academia: research fellow at Cambridge and, from there, teaching posts at the London School of Economics and Oxford.

The book he co-authored in 1983 with Itsvan Hont called Wealth and Virtue, recounts his fascination with such British imperial thinkers as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill et al. On commenting on his work, Ignatieff has said that his time studying Adam Smith had made him a devout free market advocate.

In those early years, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had set off a major wave of destruction of the real physical economy still being felt today. Her administration’s policy of ‘saving the economy’ involved destroying between 3 and 5 million jobs, liberalizing and deregulating global markets, cracking down on unions and implementing Friedmanite economic policies which soon led to the rapid cartelization of world economies. These policies created the conditions for the Maastricht Treaty and the Euro dictatorship.

Early on Ignatieff declared his allegiance to this process, when as a journalist, he attacked the striking UK miners who were defying the budget cuts, and sided with Thatcher in declaring that the miners were “acting against the national interest” of Britain (9).

Ignatieff is known to have broken all ties with old acquaintances at this point, in order to begin his new integration into the higher social caste of London.(9)

Opportunities opened up immediately for Ignatieff, whereby weekly political columns were offered to him by major dailies across the UK, followed by book contracts, elite club memberships, Pulitzer prizes, lecture tours and an image shaping makeover as an intellectual rock star. Throughout the 1990s, he was made a celebrity television personality on the BBC, and was featured as cover boy for numerous magazines, including the British GQ.

The Behaviorist Connection

In 2000, Michael Ignatieff returned back to North America to work as Director of the Carr Institute on Human Rights at Harvard University. During this time at Harvard (2000-2005), Ignatieff became close friends with Samantha Powers, Cass Sunstein and then-President Laurence Summers.

All three figures now occupy, around narcissistic President Obama, leading positions in the White House as members of the now infamous inner circle of behaviorist economists pushing fascist policies on America on behalf of British imperial financial aims. (11)

In April of 2009, during his first visit with Obama, a closed door dinner was held with Ignatieff as guest of honor (12), and the same above mentioned behaviorist economists who do not believe in defending the United States Constitution, but rather in ‘behavior modification’(13) of a population as a governing principle.

It was understood by all present that this British-Canadian scholar would soon be given the helm of Canada’s ship of state.

This affinity of minds between Ignatieff and President Obama’s closest behaviorist entourage is best illustrated by the very close relationship that exists between US National Economic Director Larry Summers, who along with his wife have spent a few holidays vacationing with the Ignatieffs at Michael Ignatieff’s estate in the South of France, as have National Security Council member Samantha Powers and U.S Regulatory czar Cass Sunstein.

Which Way for Canada?

Nearly 30 years ago, Lyndon LaRouche presented a lasting gift to Canadians when he wrote his “Draft Constitution for the Commonwealth of Canada” (14).

This 1981 undertaking by LaRouche intersected a situation in the country where Canadians appeared increasingly predisposed to establishing a sovereign constitutional order for Canada.

The political situation has certainly changed over the course of these three decades, but the rigorous, historically-grounded arguments in favor of a republican constitutional order are as valid today as they were then in 1981.

More importantly, for the urgent task confronting us today, what Lyndon LaRouche wrote in his letter of transmittal to Canadians, dated September 5, 1981, still stands as a blueprint for defining the true mission of Canada and understanding the ‘mass strike’(15) phenomena now sweeping the United States which, like the southern winds flowing through Canada, should soon warm the spirit of patriotic Canadians.

LaRouche wrote:

“…These are greatly troubled times. The credible perils of nuclear warfare, vast genocide of peoples, and moral anarchy and degradation pose today a greater peril to mankind generally than can be compared with any peril confronted since the so-called “New Dark Age” of fourteenth-century Europe. In these times, all mankind cries out implicitly for new beacons of hope of a better, more secure order in mankind’s affairs.

“It is within the power of the people of Canada to fashion themselves into such a beacon of hope, to establish a living example which other people and nations may emulate in some fashion appropriate to their own problems, development and other circumstances.

“In the past, each emergence of some great new nation, each admirable re-ordering of the affairs of a nation, has been an efficient beacon of hope for other nations and peoples witnessing such accomplishments. If it is true that great and good ideas are the unique source of all important accomplishments of mankind, it is the example of employment of such an idea by some people which has proven repeatedly the indispensable magnifier of the power of communicating such an idea to nations and people generally.”

The great classical 19th century poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller(16) expressed our dual responsibility best when he affirmed that “man is greater than his destiny” and that “he is both, at the same time, a patriot of one’s nation, but also a world citizen”.

LaRouche often refers to Percy B. Shelley(17), the republican English poet, when discussing the ‘mass strike’ phenomena now occurring in the United States:

“…Shelley writes appropriately of moments of history in which a people experiences a greatly increased capacity for imparting and receiving profound and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature. In such rare intervals a great people rises for a time above preoccupation with the immediately personal and local concerns of the ephemeral mortal lives of each, and locates its most immediate sense of self-interest in the condition of the world as a whole”.

The present strategic mission for Canada is to orient towards the Pacific-Indian Oceans Basins in a constructive manner such that our “Pacific Gateway” policy increases in commercial volume but also increases in a qualitative political strategic mode with the goal of acting in a supportive role, and perhaps a go-between mode to get the three Asian giants (Russia, China, India) to join a soon to be renewed rooseveltian United States in LaRouche’s Four Power Alliance.

This is what Canada must orient to in 2010.

This is what Canadian patriotism, rigorously defined, should mean.

Which way for Canada, then?

–The British path detailed in True Patriot Love, the path of the Queen’s Knight?

or

–The “American System” path opened by Schiller, Shelley, Roosevelt and LaRouche?

–30—

Footnotes:

(1)It’s not in the interest of either this side of the border or that side of the border. This doesn’t end well if we go down the protectionist road. We need to say very clearly and very intently with the Americans: Let’s pull back now!” -Ignatieff July 15, 2009 speaking to FCM meeting in B.

(2)http://www.committeerepubliccanada.ca/PutLaRouchePlanToSaveTheWorldEconomyOnTheAgenda.htm

(3) Radio Canada show l’Heure G; Jan 9, 1991

(4) Ignatievs and the Russian Okrahna:

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3237cheney_permwar.html

(5) “The welfare of Your Empire is based on national labor. The increase of its productivity and the discovery of new fields for Russian enterprise will always serve as the most reliable way for making the entire nation more prosperous. We have to develop mass-production industries, widely dispersed and variegated. We must give the country such industrial perfection as has been reached by the United States of America, which firmly basis its prosperity on two pillars—agriculture and industry.”

– 1899 memo from Minister of Finance Witte to Tsar Nicholas II

(6) Dmitri Mendeleyev not only discovered the harmonic ordering principle shaping the Periodic table of elements, but also served as Russian Minister of Weights and Measures, and Chairman of the Committee on the Protective Tarrif as a close ally to Sergei Witte. He wrote in his 1891 Tarrif report: “It must be understood, that the economic doctrines of the “nationalists” and the “historical school” have long since broken free-tradism at the roots, and that contemporary economic science should, for clarity, be called “anti-free trade.” This must, absolutely must be known by anyone who would speak on economic questions in the name of science”.

(7) -Lord Bertrand Russell (architect of Mutually Assured Destruction), wrote in the Bulletin for Atomic Scientists July 1947:

“If we are to preserve the peace of the world beyond the time when America ceases to have a monopoly of the bomb–which is not very distant–it must be done by having the bomb completely controlled by some one authority, and it cannot then be a national one. The period during which it can be a national authority is necessarily brief, and if the control does not pass straight from a national authority to an international authority, then we shall inevitably get an atomic war. I entirely agree that controlling atomic energy alone is not enough, and that ultimately we must have an international authority which can prevent war. But it is a step, and the machinery that is required in the one case is similar to the machinery needed in the other.

…When I speak of an international government, I mean one that really governs, not an amiable facade like the League of Nations or a pretentious sham like the United Nations under its present constitution. An international government … must have the only atomic bombs, the only plant for producing them, the only air force, the only battleships, and, generally, whatever is necessary to make it irresistible.”

(8) A brief history of the SDI: https://www.larouchepac.com/lpactv?nid=9196

(9) New Statesman, Dec 1984

(10) Being Michael Ignatieff Michael Valpy From Saturday’s Globe and Mail, 25-08-2006

(11) The behaviorists behind Obama: http://www.larouchepac.com/node/9925

(12)http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090421/libs_meeting_090421/20090421?hub=TopStories

(13) Lyndon LaRouche—January 23, 2010: [unproofed work in progress]:

In “We Are A Republic Not A Democracy”: “…That modern A.D. 1529-1763, process leading into the birth of modern British imperialism, has been the historical backdrop which must be adopted as the reference needed to situate the origins of that system of Paolo Sarpi (b.1552-d.1623) which became known by such names as “behaviorism,” a system which was based upon the prevalent, categorical rejection of any principled standard of truthfulness, as this rejection was argued by Adam Smith in his 1759 “Theory of Moral Sentiments”, as the British monetarist tradition, to the present day. The result has been, that the reigning body of so-called Liberal “popular opinion” in much of the world today, is, more often than not, a system of the sophistry imposed as a blending of induced popular stupidities and official lies.”

(14)http://www.committeerepubliccanada.ca/PDF/A%20Draft%20Constitution.pdf

(15)http://www.committeerepubliccanada.ca/PDF/MassStrikeIsOpportunity.pdf

(16) http://www.committeerepubliccanada.ca/WhatIsandtoWhatEndDoWeStudyUniversalHistory.htm

(17) http://www.committeerepubliccanada.ca/ADefenceofPoetry.htm