EDITORIAL
It’s What You Do Today That Counts, Not on Nov. 8!
Sept. 1 (EIRNS)—A new, peaceful world order, dedicated to scientific progress, real economic advancement, and an all-out effort in space exploration, is being woven together at a series of four international summit meetings during September and October. All four summits complement each other, but the single most important of them is the Group of 20 Summit in China, Sept. 4-5. If Americans show the intelligence and courage now, in September, to shake off the dying system of Obama and his like, we can begin to revive our nation’s morality, and with it our science and industry. For those who are old enough to remember it, the effect will resemble what was only promised by the brief administration of the murdered John F. Kennedy, who brought us into space and onto the Moon, where a plaque has lain since 1969 with the words, “We came in peace for all mankind.”
We must return there! We will return! The Moon is the irreplaceable gateway to the Solar System and beyond.
The impetus that John Kennedy gave to the U.S. economy during the few short months he was allowed to serve, was not completely exhausted until the beginning of the 1970s. Now, it is Barack Obama who has finally killed off everything left of the U.S. economy by shutting down our space program. And the torch that John Kennedy dropped when he was killed, has been picked up by,—Vladimir Putin! Along with the President of China, Xi Jinping, who is about to open the summit of the Group of 20.
What Russia and China are offering us is, on the one hand, membership in a vast, growing Eurasian system of interdependent infrastructure and growing science-based economy. This concept was pioneered by Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche beginning in the 1980s. Now it has become reality under the name of China’s policy of the New Silk Road adopted in 2013, called, “One Belt, One Road.”
The other, complementary part of their offer is what is called a “New Financial Architecture.” The present doomed financial system is at the verge of another blowout, which will choke off the means of livelihood throughout the entire trans-Atlantic area. Economic development based on science, space exploration, and infrastructural “development corridors,” demands a return to the financial system invented by Alexander Hamilton, as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt also returned to that system later.
Most immediately, we must take action now to insure that the estimated $2 quadrillion of world derivatives (gambling) claims, does not implode and crush us immediately, as was threatened already in 2007-08. This demands an immediate return to Franklin Roosevelt’s Glass-Steagall law, to separate commercial banking from gambling speculation while there is still time to do so. There is legislation to revive Glass-Steagall, with multiple bipartisan sponsors, in both Houses of Congress. What are our Congressmen and Senators doing? Do they have any idea how many deaths will result among our citizens, if these vital protections are delayed further?
Lyndon LaRouche issued a stern message to Americans today: If you wait to act until Nov. 8, it will probably be too late. Inform yourself and act today, and seek out and make contact with everyone else who will act with us. The governments of the world’s largest nations are appealing to us to do this, and they are right.
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
AIIB and BRICS’ New Development Bank Plan To Fund Projects Jointly
Sept. 1 (EIRNS)—Speaking a day before the inauguration of the Eastern Economic Forum at Vladivostok, New Development Bank (NDB), which was founded by the BRICS in 2014, Vice President Zhu Xian said: “We established good relations with AIIB. Also we have already started discussion of possible forms of cooperation. Firstly, we plan to co-finance some projects. Secondly, we have already signed relevant agreement on cooperation. At the moment many investment projects are in need of financing. That’s why we should not compete, but complement each other,” TASS reported today.
Both the NDB and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) are headquartered in China and were set up to partner finance projects that would fill in the huge infrastructure gap that has paralyzed development in Eurasia, if not around the world. Nominally speaking, NDB focuses on the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) while the AIIB focuses on Asian countries. TASS also quoted Zhu as saying, “I think we complement each other, also a lot of investment projects lack finance. From the other side we are willing to obtain good practices of the big bank. We want to be the financial institution of the 21st century, but not to be a copy of the traditional financial institution,” referring to the IMF and World Bank.
While the joint financing projects have not been finalized yet, Zhu Xian said the NDB “experts are studying the possibility of funding road construction projects in Russia.” “A number of Russian projects attracted our attention, especially in the transport sector,” Zhu said. In addition, Zhu told Sputnik today, “We have plans in other national bond markets, including Russia. We are already in discussions with the Russian government on the possibilities of issuing ruble-based bonds in Russia as well.”
South Korea President Taking Major Industry Delegation to Vladivostok Eastern Economic Forum
Sept. 1 (EIRNS)—South Korea’s Korea International Trade Association (KITA) told EIR today that 116 officers of 62 major South Korean companies left today with President Park Geun-hye for Vladivostok, where they will participate in the Eastern Economic Forum and the Korea-Russia Business Dialogue on Sept. 2-3. This provides a crucial opportunity for President Park to reverse the disastrous policy she imposed after the most recent North Korean nuclear test earlier this year, in which she shut down all economic relations with North Korea. This included the extremely promising cooperation between three leading South Korean companies—Hyundai Marine, the state rail company KOSCO, and the state steel company KORAIL—with both Russia and North Korea, in building up the port city of Rason in northeast North Korea and shipping Russian coal through the North into the South. Such development cooperation with the North is the only means of solving the impasse over the North’s nuclear program, since it is obvious to the world that Pyongyang will never give up its nuclear weapons program as long as Obama continues his regime-change aggression around the world, especially with the cases of Iraq and Libya before them, who shut down their nuclear weapons programs only to be bombed into oblivion by Bush and Obama.
Park and the South Korean companies will be greeted in Vladivostok by Russia’s call for collaboration on developing East Asia, which must necessarily include a development approach toward North Korea. The CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev told TASS today that at the Eastern Economic Forum, Russia will pursue the “intensification of Russian-Japan and Russian-Korean platforms at the meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Abe and Korean President Park.”
President Park will also take KITA Chairman Kim In-Ho with her to the ASEAN Summit in Laos on Sept. 6-8, where they will participate in the ASEAN+3 Summit.
Aiming To Improve Russo-Japan Economic Relations, Abe Creates a Ministerial Post
Sept. 1 (EIRNS)—Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is expected to meet the Russian President Vladimir Putin at Vladivostok during the Sept. 2-3 Eastern Economic Forum, has created a ministerial post in his cabinet “to promote economic cooperation with Russia,” Japan’s public broadcasting company NHK reported today. According to NHK, Abe decided to appoint the Economic, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko to the new post, who will hold both portfolios. RT, writing on the planned meeting between the two Abe and Putin, said “the two sides are expected to discuss the economic cooperation plan proposed by Abe in Sochi earlier this year. The plan has eight target areas of cooperation, including energy, technology, development of industries and export bases in the Russian Far East, and better people-to-people contact.”
South China Morning Post (SCMP), reporting on the creation of the ministerial post, quoted Abe’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga saying, “during his time as deputy chief Cabinet secretary, Seko held meetings on Russian diplomacy at the prime minister’s office and coordinated the cooperation plan.”
The IAEA Manila Conference on Nuclear Power in Asia Concludes as Great Success
Sept. 1 (EIRNS)—The three-day conference on Nuclear Power in the Asia-Pacific Region, sponsored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Manila, concluded today with a rousing call from President Rodrigo Duterte’s Energy Secretary Alfonzo Cusi for reopening the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) and proceeding onwards with nuclear power. Cusi said that the conference had provided him and others with a “virtual crash course on the entire chain of launching a nuclear program and the importance of public information.” He said that he and others had visited the Bataan plant this morning. “The timing of this summit is perfect,” Cusi said. “As a coincidence we had a hearing also in the Senate. We discussed also nuclear power plants and today we inspected the BNPP and there are a lot of discussions,” he said.
It should be noted that Butch Valdes, the head of the Philippines LaRouche Society, had organized a tour of the Bataan plant for politicians and engineers several years ago, which sparked the growing interest in reversing the disaster of shutting the plant after its completion in 1985, without producing a single watt of electricity. He has since been the leading spokesman for restoring the Bataan plant, and was invited to address the conference on Wednesday. In his presentation he located the sabotage of the entire Philippine economy by the U.S.-enforced closure of the plant, and then the orchestrated coup in 1986 against the Philippines nationalist leader Ferdinand Marcos. He argued that man’s creative capacity to progress through the ages resided on his increased mastery of fire, from wood, to coal, to oil, to nuclear, and now on to fusion and beyond.
Energy Secretary Cusi said that “with intensified electrification programs, increasing population, and strong GDP growth, demand for electricity is expected to grow by an average of 5% per year…. This is the most pressing concern for the country,” and that “given its known characteristics, nuclear energy can be a viable choice for the country.”
Cusi said one of the things they learned was how other nations launched their own nuclear programs.
Turkish-Russian University To Be Established in Antalya
Sept. 1 (EIRNS)—As part of the warming relations between Turkey and Russia, plans are afoot to establish a Turkish-Russian University and a Russian-language business high-school in the Turkish city of Antalya, among other joint projects. Speaking at the Turkey-Russia Journalists Forum meeting of 65 Russian and Turkish journalists, Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister Nabi Avci made the announcement. Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci told the audience at the forum that a common fund is to be established to finance joint projects. “We are aiming at carrying out common projects, particularly the projects in Syria and Iraq, along with Africa, in the reconstruction sector,” the minister said. He said that the fund could also help finance the Akkuyu Nuclear Power plant which Russia is building in southern Turkey.
Zeybekci also indicated that between the two countries, “There are ongoing efforts for increasing the usages of the ruble and lira in trade. Now only 10% of the total trade is being done in Turkish lira.”
Modi’s ‘Blue Economy’ Vision Will Create 10 Million Jobs by 2020
Sept. 1 (EIRNS)—Addressing the Indian Ocean Conference at Singapore today, India’s Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari said: “We have identified 173 projects under Sagarmala program with a total outlay of U.S. $60 billion under the following four archetypes: port modernization; port connectivity improvement; port-led industrial development; and coastal community development.”
Gadkari, whose speech was posted by the government Press Information Bureau told the conference: “We aim to complete all these projects by 2020. When completed, they will have created 10 million new jobs and increased our coastal shipping volumes by five times from the current levels of 60 million tons per annum. Most importantly Sagarmala Program will also save India close to U.S. $6 billion in logistics costs every year.”
The Sagarmala Project is a vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gadkari said: “We want to create a model of port-led development for India through the Sagarmala Port Development Project which will establish new ports and modernize old ones to link our coastal and island territories with the hinterland. The Sagarmala Project is based on four pillars: optimizing multi-modal transport to reduce cost of domestic cargo by leveraging inland waterways; minimizing time and cost of export-import cargo logistics; lowering costs for bulk industries by locating them closer to the coast; and improving export competitiveness by locating discrete manufacturing clusters near ports.”
Sino-Indian Cross-Border Cooperation Has Improved Markedly
Sept. 1 (EIRNS)—Laying bare the falsity of Western pundits, who cite their dubious sources, trying to project enhanced tensions between China and India over alleged transgressions across the borders, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying, briefing the media on the just-concluded annual meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination for the border management held in New Delhi, said, “its cross border cooperation with India made great advance and the militaries of the two sides promptly dealt with border-related issues.”
According to China’s Foreign Ministry transcript of her briefing today, Hua responded to a media question: “The meeting was held in an amicable, candid and practical way, during which the two sides positively reviewed the situation in the China-India border area in the past year, reckoning that the two countries held close communication and coordination on border affairs, military-to-military exchanges and cooperation in the border area made steady progress, the two sides properly handled border-related issues in a timely fashion, the border area maintained peaceful and stable, and cross-border cooperation made great headway. The two sides underlined that upholding peace and tranquility of the border area meets one of the top common interests and cooperation needs of the two countries. The two sides will follow through on relevant consensus reached by the two governments, strengthen communication and coordination in a constructive way, work together to handle border affairs, ramp up measures to enhance mutual trust, build on the general peace and stability of the border area, and create favorable conditions for boundary talks, bilateral relations and future high-level exchanges.”
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner Identifies the BRICS As Strategic Target of Rousseff Ouster
Sept. 1 (EIRNS)—In remarks to Argentina’s Radio 10 and Página 12 following the “judicial” coup consummated out against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff yesterday, former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner nailed the coup accurately as “an element of regional destabilization coming from internal and external concentrated economic sectors” which are unhappy with Dilma Rousseff for having brought the whole of South America together around the BRICS at the Fortaleza summit in July 2014.
Interviewed on Radio 10 by Roberto Navarro, host of the “Economía Politica” TV program, Fernández charged that Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and other nations are being targetted for having adopted a more independent foreign policy, and allying with Russia and China. Asked by her interviewer if she was saying that the United States was reacting to the foreign policy adopted by Rousseff, herself and others, she specified that “the meeting which Dilma [Rousseff] held in Brazil, between Mercosur, Unasur and the BRICS didn’t sit very well with … the extra-continental powers” behind the coup against Rousseff.
“We are experiencing a moment of regional destabilization,” she told Página 12. The “superpowers” responsible for the coup, are orchestrating a “harsh strategy against popular governments”—an evaluation which U.S. statesman Lyndon LaRouche heartily concurred today.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Lavrov: Russia Is Ready To Restore Relations with the West, But No More ‘Business as Usual’
Sept. 1 (EIRNS)—In remarks delivered to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations earlier today, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that Russia is ready to restore normal relations with the West, “but only on the basis of equality, without any attempts to transform these relations into a one-way traffic.”
Earlier in his remarks, he said, among other things, that there’s no reason for a new Cold War. The conditions for it just don’t exist. In contrast to the era of ideological differences, Russia and the United States have common principles that both countries share as part of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the United Nations. “They envisage a democratic development of societies,” Lavrov said. The problem, he stressed, is that the EU, U.S. and NATO frequently violate their obligations with respect to the sphere of security, making business as usual impossible. “Political commitments [on European security] have been grossly violated and continue to be violated, and our proposals to translate these commitments from political declarations into the category of legally binding ones have been rejected outright,” he said. “Our proposals encountered the selfishness of the political elites of a number of states, which sought to get geo-strategic advantages at the expense of other countries, flagrantly violating the solemn declarations that were adopted in the 1990s both at the summit level and within the OSCE, as well as within the framework of relations between Russia and NATO, that said that security is indivisible and that no country would strengthen its security at the expense of others,” the minister said. “I hope that our partners remember this. But if they have forgotten, we will, of course, remind them, because we’ll not be able now to conduct business as usual either with the U.S. or EU, let alone NATO,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov also ridiculed the notion that Russia has become isolated from the rest of the world by Western sanctions. “All those who criticize us in this regard [to Russian actions in Crimea and Syria] say members of the world community allegedly turned away from us,” Lavrov said. “To begin with, no one has turned away from us, and it would be wrong to say that these are all members of the international community. Eighty percent of the world’s population lives in the countries, which share our approaches and want justice in world affairs, so speaking about any kind of isolation is ridiculous.”
Global Times Editorial Insists China Won’t Be Diverted by U.S.-Japan Geopolitics
Sept. 1 (EIRNS)—China’s party newspaper Global Times editorialized on Wednesday that the U.S. efforts, with Japanese support in some cases, to draw China into a geopolitical confrontation will not work, and encourages the government to not be diverted, but to proceed with win-win policies.
The editorial reviews Abe’s cooperation with Russia, Obama’s “Pivot” and his upcoming trip to the East Asia Summit in Laos, and the Indian Defense Minister’s current visit to Washington, saying that Western self-avowed analysts describe these moves as efforts to pull countries away from their cooperation with China. “China seems to be positioned in the center of the geopolitical maneuvers by the U.S. and Japan,” the editorial says. “But Beijing should not let its attention be led by the two. Geopolitics in the 21st century is not like the traditional game of Go where every piece aims to encircle the others. The outside world has miscalculated geopolitics by interpreting China’s diplomacy.”
It continues, that China is not “encircling” the U.S. when it establishes ties with Cuba and Mexico and other Ibero-American nations, nor challenging India by working on development projects in Sri Lanka.
On the other hand, the editorial goes on: “The U.S. and Japan have the motivations to initiate a geopolitical competition with China, but China will not be made to give in. Myanmar is a neighbor of China that Washington and Tokyo have been particularly keen to court. Nonetheless, after Aung San Suu Kyi’s recent China visit, the relationship between China and Myanmar is steering to the opposite direction to the wishes of the U.S. and Japan. The arbitration case around the South China Sea, a contention point between China and the U.S., will eventually prove beneficial for China.”
They conclude: “China has just become a real major power. China needs to develop modern national defense, and at the same time keep long-term economic vitality and expand its vision. The Chinese military should become so strong that we can withstand any external military pressure. The Chinese economy should retain its momentum of long-term prosperity that will surpass that of the U.S. This is the primary task for China, and we should not let our attention be diverted by the clamorous geopolitical rivalry in the Asia-Pacific.”
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
China’s Harbin Bank To Set Up Innovation Fund with Russia’s Sberbank
Sept. 1 (EIRNS)—China’s Harbin Bank CEO Zhang Qiguang told TASS today Harbin Bank and Russian Sberbank will set up an investment fund to render support for high-technology projects of Russia and China. “We plan to set up a research and technology development fund. It will finance Sino-Russian high-technology production facilities,” Zhang said. “The decision has not yet been made regarding the size of projects to be supported by the fund. However, it has already been clear that the fund will amount to $500 million.”
Harbin Bank Co. Ltd., based in China, provides various commercial banking products and services primarily in Mainland China, while Russia’s Sberbank, whose principal shareholder is the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, accounts for one-third of Russia’s banking system, according to its website.
In addition to setting up the investment fund, Zhang Qiguang also told TASS that his bank has concluded “agreements with 21 Russian banks for 13 billion yuan ($1.95 billion).” “The Russian-Chinese Financial Council exists a little less than a year. During this time, financial structures of our countries have achieved significant results in many areas, including settlements in national currencies in cross-border transactions, trading derivatives and lending to banks. Currently, 21 agreements are signed for 13 billion yuan ($1.95 billion),” Zhang said.
