EIR Daily Alert Service

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EDITORIAL

It Is London’s New Provocations That Threaten World War

April 16 (EIRNS)—Again today, blaspheming Easter Sunday, London’s imperial media tried to provoke the Trump Administration to war by citing British establishment figures claiming to know and even to control American war plans.

Since British intelligence first attempted to launch “Trump-Russia” scandals into American politics nearly two years ago, this has been British imperial strategy: Prevent cooperation of a Trump-led United States with China and Russia for a new economic development and security paradigm. Plunge America into new war disasters instead.

The American people, and those of other nations, must reject and defeat these British goads to war—which threaten thermonuclear world war—and choose that new paradigm.

Today’s London Sunday Times, in a blatant call for all-out war on the Korean Peninsula, claimed that “Britain has been told” the Trump Administration is about to attack targets all over North Korea to eliminate the D.P.R.K.’s nuclear program. “Donald Trump’s closest military advisors have told Britain that America has the firepower to neutralize the regime’s nuclear infrastructure—and may soon launch a pre-emptive strike to do so. In what will be seen as an attempt to pile pressure on China, … senior sources said the United States could ‘utterly destroy’ the key targets using conventional weapons.

“ ‘They’ll do anything it takes,’ said a senior British source. ‘Nothing is off the table. They think they’ve got the capabilities to target things and utterly destroy them. They are confident they know where everything is and can target it efficiently.’ A military source who talked to [National Security Advisor Gen. H.R.] McMaster this month said he was aware any such attempt would come at terrible cost because it would probably provoke missile strikes against South Korea.

“A senior [British!] government source said: ‘They are getting to the point where they think they have to take out the facilities pre-emptively…. They are much closer to taking military action.’ ”

Making every effort to claim that a U.S. attack on North Korea—and North Korea war on South Korea—is imminent, the Sunday Times also quoted former British Defense Secretary and Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind asserting baldly, with no evidence, that the United States made a cyberwarfare attack on North Korea’s attempted missile test Saturday night. “ ‘There is a very strong belief that the U.S. through cyber methods has been successful on several occasions in interrupting these tests and making them fail,’ Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former foreign and defense secretary, told the BBC.”

And on BBC, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, again on Easter Sunday, was cheering for the U.S. cruise missile strike on Syria, and calling for joint U.S.-British military intervention in Syria to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

But President Trump said through Twitter on April 15, “Things will work out fine between the U.S.A. and Russia. There will be lasting peace.” The British barbarian cries for war bore no relation to the actual statements of Trump’s advisor General McMaster on national television on Sunday.

Everything the British are demanding is the opposite of President Trump’s “American System of economy” campaign which rejected regime-change wars. London is out to destroy his Presidency by “resignation, impeachment or assassination,” as the British Spectator forecast.

“What is wrong with the Trump Administration, is the British Empire!” said Helga Zepp-LaRouche on Sunday as forces of the LaRouche movement mobilized Americans to defeat that empire’s provocations. She had just keynoted a major two-day conference in New York City on the new economic development paradigm of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which brought together key representatives of China and Russia with engineers and scientists to address the American people on cooperation for the new paradigm.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

9/11 Money Trail to Hijackers Directly Leads from Saudi Monarchy

April 16 (EIRNS)—A separate lawsuit filed March 20 by the lead lawyer for hundreds of 9/11 families suing the Saudis under Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, JASTA, says the money trail to the hijackers leads directly from the witting Saudi monarchy. Because of leads presented when Barack Obama was forced to release the long-secret “28 pages” of the 2002 Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, the law firm of Kreindler and Kreindler filed the first really new motion in the case in more than a decade.

An April 7 Politico magazine piece, “One Man’s Quest To Prove Saudi Arabia Bankrolled 9/11,” reported that in the filing, attorney James Kreindler claims to demonstrate the actual trail of $370,000 in payments from the Saudi Monarchy to the hijackers. In summary, the motion presents evidence that the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs knowingly provided the money for the entire operation to the hijackers.

The “28 Pages” provided a lead never investigated before: “It was a reference to a Somali nonprofit that, according to an FBI agent, ‘may allow the Saudi government to provide al-Qaeda with funding through covert or indirect means.’ ” The law firm was able to identify that “foundation” in San Diego, a one-man operation of a Somali named Omar Abdi Mohamed, who was deported in 2004 for lying to ICE that his foundation had raised almost no money.

In fact, the Saudi Ministry, through a “diplomat” in its Washington Embassy, Khaileid Sowailem, had provided extra funds to a Chicago “foundation” named Global Relief. And Global Relief simultaneously “granted” $370,000 to the phony Somali foundation in San Diego which was supposed to be helping Somalis in America. Omar Abdi Mohamed in turn wrote 65 checks totalling $370,000 to an Islamic wire funds service run by Mohamed Sulaiman Barre, who was in Karachi, Pakistan, working directly with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (who has said in a Gitmo prison interview that he worked with Saudi Arabia). Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had the money sent to his nephew in Dubai, who transmitted it to the hijackers, again totalling about $370,000, which was estimated by the 9/11 Commission (2004) to be what the hijackers spent in getting ready for the 9/11 attacks.

Kreindler regards the confirmation of the identity of the Saudi “diplomat” of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Khaileid Sowailem, as key. Sowailem also provably paid the San Diego Somali, Omar Abdi Mohamed, a direct salary. And Sowailem’s phone at the D.C. Embassy registered 30 calls in 2001 with Omar al-Bayoumi, who was in San Diego dispensing funds and advice to two of the hijackers, and whose salary was suddenly more than doubled for that purpose. Sowailem left the embassy and the United States in 2004 after the arrest of the San Diego Somali, Omar Abdi Mohamed.

The Kreindler firm won a $3 billion settlement from Libya over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. James Kreindler seems to have discussed with Politico a possible final strategy, based on the strength of this new evidence, of getting Saudi Arabia to settle the way Libya did.

LaRouche Slams British Role in Korean Peninsula, Global Crises

April 15 (EIRNS)—Lyndon LaRouche today issued a sharp warning about the continuing, extreme danger posed by the strategic showdown around the Korean Peninsula, all orchestrated by the British Empire.

“The British system started the whole thing, and we have to stop it,” LaRouche stated. This is a global crisis, not something happening in just one part of the planet. Most people are opposed to the idea of war over Syria or North Korea, but they have no idea what is actually behind this, nor how to stop it. “Ignorance creates the opening for the death of mankind,” LaRouche warned.

Although the immediate threat around North Korea’s celebration of the Day of the Sun did not materialize, the situation remains very, very serious. LaRouche emphasized that he had personally authored the programmatic solution to the conflict—through joint economic cooperation among North and South Korea, Russia and China—and worked with political forces in the area to bring it about, but this was sabotaged by British interests. We have to stop their current war drive, LaRouche stressed, or they will blow up the whole world. This has to be taken seriously: Unless the British system is crushed, there will not be a safe world for the United States, for Europe, or for other nations.

A good example of an approach that will not work, and only lead to British-orchestrated war, is what the media are presenting as the result of a two-month-long policy review on North Korea by the Trump administration. Writing in the April 14 Washington Post, Josh Rogin reported that the results of the review were leaked to journalists by senior officials, including through an April 13 private dinner in Washington with a “top administration North Korea policy official who talked about the new approach.” The policy is for “maximum pressure” short of regime change, to try to force the full denuclearization of North Korea. As for what the Trump administration will do if there is another North Korean nuclear test, the officials said that “nothing is off the table, but that the U.S. won’t telegraph its response in advance.” One senior official told Rogin: “Do we anticipate it? Possibly. But are there options already developed? Absolutely…. So with that regime, it’s not a matter of ‘if,’ it’s ‘when.’ So we’re well prepared to counter that.”

President Trump Will Get the Ex-Im Bank Back in Operation

April 14 (EIRNS)—President Trump has wisely reversed his previous opposition to the operation of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, and has decided to nominate two people to fill the vacancies in the Board of Trustees at the Bank. The vacancies have prevented it from operating for more than a year. Free-market neocons have attacked the bank as “corporate welfare,” accused it of being “riddled with corruption,” featherbedding for wealthy corporations, etc.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal April 12, Trump said: “I was very much opposed to the Ex-Im Bank, because I said, what do we need that for IBM and for General Electric and all these—it turns out that, first of all, lots of small companies will really be helped, the vendor companies, but also maybe more importantly, other countries give it [the financial support]. And when other countries give it, we lose a tremendous amount of business. So instinctively you would say it’s a ridiculous thing, but actually, it’s a very good thing and it actually makes money.”

The Ex-Im Bank was created by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1934 by Executive Order 6581. The purpose is to extend credit to nations so they are able to purchase products from the U.S. where the risk is too high to garner private credit. The Ex-Im Bank helped finance the Pan-American Highway, the Burma Road, and post-World War II reconstruction.

In a statement of support, the Aerospace Industries Association pointed out that the aerospace and defense industries generated $146 billion in exports last year, and that there are 60 foreign government-based export credit agencies that the industry must compete with.

According to media reports, President Trump had met on Feb. 23 with the CEOs of GE and Caterpillar, both heavily dependent upon exports, and two days ago, with Boeing former CEO Jim McNerney. General Electric has also been lobbying to get the bank back in business.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Russian Lawmaker Warns of Preemptive U.S. Strike at North Korea

April 15 (EIRNS)—Russian Senator Konstantin Kosachev, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federation Council (upper house), stated April 14 that the possibility of a U.S. attack on North Korea must be taken seriously. He said that “the most alarming aspect of the current situation is that we can’t be sure whether the U.S. administration is bluffing or it is actually ready to implement its threats.”

According to a TASS report, writing on Facebook, Kosachev said: “This is why we have to take seriously the news saying that the U.S. is ready to launch a preemptive strike on North Korea in case information is received about Pyongyang’s preparations for a new nuclear test.” Kosachev was referring to the NBC News story from late April 13 which quoted unnamed high-level American intelligence officials saying that such a preemptive U.S. strike was under preparation and could be launched.

Unlike Trump, the Russian lawmaker wrote, the North Korean response is predictable: “They take the threat seriously, so they are starting military preparations.” He urged Trump to listen to what both Russia and China are telling him: “North Korea is not the case when you first strike and then discuss your reasons with others.”

New Congressional Moves against Saudi Genocide in Yemen

April 15 (EIRNS)—Four U.S. Senators—Chris Murphy (D-CT), Rand Paul (R-KY), Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Al Franken (D-MN)—have introduced a resolution that would limit U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen. “The United States has no business supplying a military that targets civilians or enables terrorist groups to thrive, but that’s exactly what we’re doing right now in Yemen,” Murphy said in a statement posted on his Senate office website. “The Saudis are important partners in the Middle East, but they have continued to disregard our advice when it comes to target selection and civilian protection.”

The bipartisan legislation will require the President to formally certify that the government of Saudi Arabia is demonstrating an ongoing effort to target terrorist groups, minimize harm to civilians, and facilitate humanitarian assistance before Congress can consider the sale or transfer of air-to-ground munitions to Saudi Arabia, before the Congress will consider further arms sales.

Fifty-five members of the House have also reportedly written to Trump calling for an end both to U.S. refueling for Saudi coalition warplanes and to logistical assistance for the Saudi-led bombings in Yemen, and they said Trump must seek Congressional approval before he deepens U.S. military involvement, reports Defense News. This all comes as the administration is considering supporting a Saudi-led assault on the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, which is controlled by the Houthis and is really the only serious deepwater port for the entire country. On April 12, the World Food Program warned that 9 million Yemenis are in urgent need of food assistance. At the same time, 38 NGOs signed a letter to President Trump calling on him to reconsider supporting the assault on Hodeidah.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Reflects Africa’s Growing Hydropower

April 14 (EIRNS)—The construction of the 6,000-megawatt, $5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) that began nearly seven years ago, is now close to completion. By the end of this year, the dam, which sits on the Blue Nile near the border of Ethiopia and Sudan, will begin generating electricity. Meanwhile, its vast 74 billion cubic meter reservoir will start to fill, a process expected to take anywhere from 5 to 15 years, according to a report in the IEEE Spectrum. Further, preparations are afoot for transmitting the electricity that will be generated as of 2018.

On April 5, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said the 500 kilovolt line will connect the dam on the Blue Nile River with Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, addressing reporters alongside the Ethiopian premier in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, praised an existing road and telecommunications network connecting the neighboring nations. The two leaders stated that the line is intended to forge greater political, economic, and social relations, and mentioned future plans for a railway and a free economic zone, Turkey’s Anadolu Agency reported on April 6.

A Brookings report on April 7 also pointed out that GERD reflects the growing hydropower development in Africa, citing the groundbreaking ceremony by the authorities of Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi to begin the Resumo Falls hydroelectric project on the Kagera River, on the Tanzania-Rwanda border. Upon completion, each country will be receiving 80 MW of electricity.

The dam is funded by the World Bank and constructed by Chinese firms CGCOC Group and JWHC JV for civil works, as well as ANDRITZ Hydro from Germany/India for electro-mechanical works, Brookings reported. The African Development Bank is funding the construction of transmission lines, estimated at $121 million.

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Italy Under the Self-Inflicted Troika Policy

April 14 (EIRNS)—Italy has not submitted to the Troika as Greece has, but over the years it has self-inflicted the Troika policy, achieving a consistent “primary surplus” and positive balance of trade each and every year in the last decade. This has been achieved by sacrificing growth, employment and social services, capital investments, medical care and social security. The result is a dramatic spread of poverty, illustrated in the latest report by the Italian national statistics institute, Istat.

The Istat report shows that in 2015, after 15 years of “Euro” therapy, 6.1% of resident families live in absolute poverty, and 10.4% live in relative poverty; that is 4.598 million and 8.307 million individuals (13.7% of the population).

Relative and absolute poverty are calculated in relation to the average income of the population. GDP per capita, calculated in adjusted purchasing power, has collapsed in Italy. It was 6.5% above the EU average before the crisis, and now is 4.5% below that average.

Officially, a few more than 6 out of 10 persons between 20 and 64 years old have jobs. In the EU this is the lowest rate after Greece.

Italy’s public budget, which a common line claims is overblown, is on average lower than the other large EU economies—Germany, France, and the U.K.—with €13,600 per inhabitant. Despite a functioning national health service, 23.3% of medical expenses are paid by families. Public health expenses per capita are €2,400, compared with €3,000 in France and €4,000 in Germany.

Senator Cantwell Issues Call for Mass Support for Glass-Steagall

April 16 (EIRNS)—On April 12, various media received a message from the Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), calling for mass support for S.881, the Senate bill for a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act. Cantwell, along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. John McCain (R-AR), and Sen. Angus King (I-ME), introduced the bill April 6. She is now issuing a petition for circulation among the citizenry of the nation. Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s bill for restoring Glass-Steagall (the Return to Prudent Banking Act—H.R.790) already has 43 sponsors in the House.

Other petition campaigns on Glass-Steagall are already underway, including one by a coalition of groups, led by the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, and Americans for Financial Reform; it reportedly has surpassed 250,000 signatures on the Internet. Progressive Democrats from Ohio and the LaRouche Political Action Committee are also conducting petition campaigns to hold President Trump to his promise to support Glass-Steagall.

Cantwell intends to submit the petition signatures to the Republican and Democratic leaderships of the House and Senate, and the relevant committees on banking and finance.

The petition reads in part:

“Rein in the Too Big To Fail Banks! Pass Glass-Steagall! In a surprise move, both Democrats and Republicans included reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act in their official party platforms. Congress must quickly back this up with action, as working people are still hurting from the 2008 financial crisis. Many lost their homes and jobs, and are still struggling to make ends meet for their families.

“At the same time, Wall Street executives have made billions and big banks have gotten even bigger. They’ve continued with their risky behavior that caused the 2008 crisis. The rules are rigged in favor of Wall Street. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Before the Glass-Steagall Act was rolled back in the 1990s, it helped protect our financial system for over 60 years, by separating conventional commercial banking from the Wall Street casino. Momentum is growing to pass a modern Glass-Steagall Act. A huge majority of working people support the idea of reinstating the Act and a bipartisan bill … has already been introduced in the Senate.”

The petition can be signed on Cantwell’s Senate website.

OTHER

More Chinese Students Studying Overseas Are Returning Home

April 14 (EIRNS)—In 2016, more than 432,000 students returned to China, the highest since the establishment of China, when only 248 came home, Global Times reported April 12. Overseas recruiting company Lockin China expects that more than 660,000 overseas students will return this year.

The article cites “optimism in the growth of China’s economy,” as well as (undoubtedly, secondarily) anti-immigration sentiment “in some foreign nations.” Many students are having trouble finding jobs in other countries, it is reported, where economies have slowed over the past few years, and China has developed many incentives for them to come back. About 85% of the Chinese students educated abroad found a job in China within a half-year in 2016, reported Miao Lu, secretary general of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization.

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