EIR Daily Alert Service
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2017
Volume 4, Number 115
EIR Daily Alert Service
P.O. BOX 17390, WASHINGTON, DC 20041-0390
• Coup Attempt against Trump Faltering, as Americans Begin To See a
Future Once Again
• Grassley Response: Go After the British; The Fish Stinks from the
Head
• New York Post: Comey Worse than J. Edgar Hoover—He’s Part of the
Coup
• Comey Claims He Doesn’t Have His Own Memo; Committee Insist
His Friend Hand It Over
• Oliver Stone on His Interview with Putin, Which Begins Monday
Night on Showtime
• Russian General Rudskoy: Civil War In Syria Has Stopped
• Trump Spoke at U.S. Infrastructure-Building Roads and Rails Event,
Focused on Regulatory Relief
• New Broadsides for Glass-Steagall Published
• Putin Urges Shanghai Cooperation Organization To Expand, Link
with EAEU, ASEAN, and BRI
• The Asia-Latin America Trans-Pacific Cable Integral to the Belt and
Road
• India’s Modi and China’s Xi Meet on the Sidelines of the SCO
Summit
• Theresa May Hanging by a Thread
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2017
EDITORIAL
Coup Attempt against Trump Faltering, as Americans Begin To See a
Future Once Again
June 11 (EIRNS)—When FDR died before the end of the war, Lyndon
LaRouche despaired that a great man had passed, and warned that a very
little man was taking over.
Looking back on 1945 from today’s perspective, do Americans
recognize that the United States won the war based on FDR’s defeat of the
British bankers on Wall Street, by restoring the American System of credit
for development, not for speculation, through the Glass-Steagall
legislation? Do they recognize that the “arsenal of democracy” which
defeated fascism was possible only because FDR had created the greatest
infrastructure boom in all of history, in a few short years, giving the U.S. an
overwhelming advantage in production and logistics? Do they recognize
that Roosevelt’s collaboration with China and Russia (the U.S.S.R. at that
time) was indispensable in saving the world from fascism? Or do they
believe the myth that the war was won by Truman’s incineration of
Japanese civilians, and that the Cold War was necessary to save the world
from “Godless Communism”?
These questions are crucial for today. After 16 years of austerity,
permanent colonial warfare (“regime change”), and cultural degeneration
under Bush, Cheney and Obama, Americans were threatened with death by
pessimism and despair, by economic decay, and the cultural degradation of
their human dignity.
But the world has now changed. The New Silk Road, since being
declared by Xi Jinping in 2013, in a few short years, just as FDR had done
within the U.S., has set nearly the entire world on a course of vast
infrastructure development, lifting the platform of human productivity
worldwide, and demonstrating that poverty can indeed be eliminated,
throughout the globe, as the Chinese have nearly done within their own
nation. China and Russia are uniting the nations of Eurasia behind this great
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2017
enterprise, and reaching out to all of Asia, Africa and the Americas to join
in.
And now in the United States, a President has emerged who rejects the
Imperial divide of the world, who rejects regime change, and who promotes
friendship and collaboration with Russia and China, both to defeat
terrorism, and to cooperate in the Belt and Road Initiative to meet the
common aims of Mankind.
The Empire has responded with a vengeance. Using every resource at
their disposal—war-mongering neocons from both the Republican and
Democratic parties, the putrid whores of the mainstream media, and the
British operatives in the Bush and Obama intelligence communities—an
effort was made to demonize Putin, claim Russia stole the election, and that
Trump was a tool of Moscow. Trump was to be destroyed at all costs—a
“color revolution” against our own nation. Leading the effort were the well
known liars and traitors who led Obama’s intelligence agencies: John
Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey.
As the New York Post’s Michael Goodwin pointed out Saturday: “J.
Edgar Hoover kept his job because five Presidents were afraid to fire him.
His insurance was the dirt he secretly collected on them. Comey is cut from
the same cloth, but Trump wasn’t afraid to fire him.”
Now reality is setting in among the American people. Comey’s lies
stand exposed. Trump refuses to back down to the war-mongers’ lies about
Russia and/or China.
The question that remains: Will the American people revive the outlook
of our Founding Fathers, of Franklin Roosevelt, of John F. Kennedy, by
looking back at today from the future? Will New Yorkers adopt a vision of
the city with high-speed rail connections in all directions, with maglev
trains replacing the sweaty, noisy collapsing subway system? Will
Americans dare to believe that the nation can be transformed in just a few
short years, as FDR did, as the Chinese have done today?
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2017
Over the next few weeks, the Manhattan Project will be co-sponsoring a
series of events that provide the creative ammunition needed to answer that
question in the affirmative. The co-sponsor, the Foundation for the Revival
of Classical Culture has the invitation to the June 29 Carnegie Hall event
honoring Sylvia Olden Lee, which will be followed by a seminar on
classical tuning and vocal placement. Further events with the Schiller
Institute and its Chinese friends and others from around the world will
follow shortly, continuing to provide direction to the revolutionary changes
sweeping the nation and the world.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Grassley Response: Go After the British; The Fish Stinks from the
Head
June 9 (EIRNS)—The Hill reported June 9 that Sen. Chuck Grassley (RIA)
has had the appropriate response to the ongoing coup against Trump,
whose leading spokesman was James Comey. Grassley has sent Glenn
Simpson, who heads Fusion GPS, a letter stating that if the firm does not
respond voluntarily to his prior requests for information about the dodgy
British dossier by MI6 agent Christopher Steele, he will subpoena the
information under Senate rules. Christopher Steele prepared his dodgy
dossiers under the auspices of Fusion GPS, a Washington D.C. opposition
research firm working at the time for the Clinton campaign. Steele was the
former head of British Intelligence’s Russia desk, and still collaborates with
the highest levels of the Queen’s Secret Service, as well as the FBI.
Grassley has asked about who paid Steele, and what the relationship was
between Fusion GPS, Steele, and Comey’s FBI. Fusion has thrown up a
score of privileges in an attempt to block Grassley’s inquiry. Comey had
also blocked similar inquiries by Grassley.
As Comey testified June 8, on January 6th Comey presented the
President with the Steele dossier in a one-to-one meeting, having cleared
the nation’s other intelligence chiefs out of the room. The dossier contains
salacious allegations of sexual misconduct by Trump with Russian hookers.
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2017
As opposed to Comey’s general rationale for this meeting, he blurted out in
his Senate testimony that it could be construed as ‘a J. Edgar Hoover
moment’; i.e., he was attempting to blackmail the President into
acquiescing to the elite’s continuing warfare against Russia. The British
intelligence product has otherwise served as the FBI’s roadmap for its
entire phony counterintelligence investigation involving Russian meddling
in the U.S. elections.
New York Post: Comey Worse than J. Edgar Hoover—He’s Part of the
Coup
June 11 (EIRNS)—Michael Goodwin of the New York Post, who coined
the term “J. Edgar Comey” (even before Comey himself admitted to doing
the same thing Hoover did regularly in blackmailing people with threats to
release material, whether true or false) wrote June 10 that “My descriptions
of the former FBI boss as J. Edgar Comey are accurate but incomplete,” in
that he is also at the center of the move to remove Trump from office.
“He admitted to the Senate he leaked just one memo criticizing Trump
over the Gen. Michael Flynn case, asking a friend to give it to the New York
Times,” Goodwin writes. “But that was not the first leak, for the Times had
reported five days earlier on a separate, personal Comey memo attacking
Trump for demanding loyalty, calling its anonymous sources ‘Mr. Comey’s
associates.’ Wait, that wasn’t the first leak, either. On March 5, one day
after Trump accused President Barack Obama of wiretapping him at Trump
Tower, the Times reported that Comey was furious at the charge. Its
unnamed sources were senior American officials. All three stories carried
the byline of Michael Schmidt, as did others describing intimate details of
Comey’s dealings with Trump.”
His conclusion: “In calling Comey a leaker, Trump may have made the
first understatement of his life. My bet is that Comey was a fountain of
leaks, and didn’t show interest in prosecuting others because of his own
guilt.”
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2017
Trump tweeted this morning along the same lines: “I believe James
Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible.
Totally illegal? Very ‘cowardly’!”
Comey Claims He Doesn’t Have His Own Memo; Committee Insist
His Friend Hand It Over
June 10 (EIRNS)—The chairs and ranking members of the Senate Judiciary
Committee and its National Security Subcommittee issued a letter on
Thursday, June 8 to the “close friend” of James Comey, Columbia Law
Professor Daniel Richman, demanding that he turn over the memo Comey
gave him with instructions that he leak it to the press—a significant piece in
the ongoing coup attempt against the President of the United States. In the
letter, Chuck Grassley, Dianne Feinstein, Lindsey Graham, and Sheldon
Whitehouse report that Comey told the Congress June 8 that he did not
keep a copy of the memo—in incredible lie which Helga Zepp-LaRouche
declared to be “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever heard.”
The letter also demands all other memoranda Comey may have provided
Richman and gave him only until midnight Friday to turn it all over.
It is not known if Richman complied as of Friday night, but the New
York Post reported that Richman “confirmed by e-mail to several reporters
that he was the good friend and law-school prof who Comey slipped the
documents to, then hightailed it out of his tiny Brooklyn Heights home and
refused to answer any more questions.”
Oliver Stone on His Interview with Putin, Which Begins Monday Night
on Showtime
June 11 (EIRNS)—Oliver Stone’s four-part interview documentary,
showing Monday-Thursday this week on Showtime, was compiled from 19
hours of interviews over several months, the last being in February. Stone
said of the interviews: “I’m here to get Putin to talk. Let him talk. If I can
encourage him to talk by having an empathetic ear, that is the reporter’s
way. I’m also a dramatist. I’m encouraging my actors to be better. To say
more. To give me a performance….
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2017
“I think I challenged him. You may think I was a pussycat, but no, I
think I challenged him.” He said that Putin’s work ethic was a distinctive
feature. “I admire his discipline. His ability to do this off and on for 16
years. His stamina, the way he works. No American President works these
hours as far as I know. He reminds me of Jimmy Carter in that sense,
dedication to work.”
He described Putin as humble. Asked if he plans to make a feature film
on Putin, Stone replied, “I don’t think I would have the guts. Sometimes,
after seeing the real thing, I’m not sure what else I can express.”
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Russian General Rudskoy: Civil War In Syria Has Stopped
June 10 (EIRNS)—Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy, the chief of the Main
Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff, told reporters at the
Defense Ministry in Moscow that the situation in Syria significantly
improved after the signing of the Astana memorandum on setting up deescalation
zones. “In fact, the civil war in Syria has stopped,” he asserted.
“Schools are being renovated so that children could resume their studies. In
just one month, international organizations sent a total of 14 humanitarian
convoys, which made life much easier for the locals.”
Hours later, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., spokesman Capt. Jeff
Davis thanked the Russians for cooling things down around al-Tanf, Syria.
“We asked the Russians to help,” and the Russians have been “very
helpful” in limiting clashes between the partnered force at the border town
of al-Tanf and forces of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-
Assad backed by Hezbollah fighters. Davis said the border area was fairly
calm June 9 as opposed to June 8, when a U.S. F-15 shot down a large
unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, that had dropped a munition on an area
controlled by the U.S.-backed force.
Reuters reported, yesterday, citing anonymous U.S. and regional
officials, that the U.S. and Russia are negotiating a “de-escalation zone” in
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2017
southwestern Syria, one which would exclude Iranian participation. The
Russian and U.S. special envoys for Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev and
Michael Ratney, and other officials have met at least twice in the Jordanian
capital Amman in the past two weeks and will talk again soon, these
officials said. The proposed de-escalation zone would include the provinces
of Deraa, which borders Jordan, and Quneitra, which borders the Israelioccupied
Golan Heights. “The two sides are in the process of drafting its
borders … and which outside forces will be on the ground. But there are
many flaws on how to implement it,” an unnamed regional intelligence
official told Reuters.
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Trump Spoke at U.S. Infrastructure-Building Roads and Rails Event,
Focused on Regulatory Relief
June 9 (EIRNS)—Friday morning at the Department of Transportation,
President Donald Trump spoke at the Roads, Rails, and Regulatory Relief
Roundtable, reiterating his commitment to building U.S. infrastructure. He
announced that a new council will be formed to assist project managers to
get through the process, and a new office will be created to prevent
outdated Federal rules from holding things up. He displayed a 70-lb, threebinder
environmental report that was done for an 18-mile road project in
Maryland. The $29 million report worked out to $24,000 a page.
Trump’s activities today top off his announced “infrastructure week” of
meetings and initiatives. On Wednesday, he spoke at the Ohio River in
Cincinnati, highlighting the need to rebuild the 12,000 mile waterway
system, and other goals, which today, he referred to as, “roads, rails,
runways and rivers.”
A letter of support for Trump on this was sent this week by four Ohio
Democrats, Representatives Marcy Kaptur, Tim Ryan, and Marcia Fudge,
and Joyce Beatty. They commended Trump’s efforts to invest in American
infrastructure, and his visit to Ohio to highlight the needs, and stressed
many areas needing work. They cited aged city water systems needing
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2017
modernization and that the electric grid needs upgraded. They asked for
improvements to the Great Lakes locks, dams, harbors and ship channel,
including the St. Lawrence Seaway. In particular, finishing the Sault Ste.
Marie Locks upgrade in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is critical. They see
expanding infrastructure as the way to “revitalize the domestic steel
industry, a foundational economic sector.”
Trump did not give further details this week on financing the
infrastructure program, beyond his existing plan of the Federal government
outlay of $200 billion, which then is to result in a $1 trillion dollar
program, by local and state governments being involved, and private
investors joining in.
New Broadsides for Glass-Steagall Published
June 9 (EIRNS)—“President Trump: Do You Want Glass- Steagall or
Another Economic Meltdown?” is the title of a comprehensive open letter
to the President by author and former investment banker Nomi Prins, which
she posted June 8 to TomDispatch.com, and was reposted to TruthOut and
other widely-read sites. Prins has met with many Members of Congress and
staff for Glass-Steagall since April, and will continue doing so. The House
passage of the so-called “Financial CHOICE” bank deregulation bill,
because it will not move in the Senate, has not ended by only intensified the
debate involving Glass-Steagall reinstatement.
Prins’ letter to the President includes a thorough history of the Glass-
Steagall Act’s passage and long success, and details how “For the first time
since its repeal, a return to the Glass-Steagall Act [has] bipartisan support.”
But “The division and the as-yet unresolved nature of the Trump
administration response to the Glass-Steagall question could, in the face of
another financial crisis, come back to haunt us all, if it translates into more
bailouts and systemic failures.”
Showing the 2007-08 financial panic a direct consequence of the
elimination of Glass-Steagall, Prins writes: “In the fall of 2007, that system
finally started buckling because of the problems of Citigroup, not because
of the investment banks, which would not have been covered by GlassMONDAY,
JUNE 12, 2017
Steagall. The catastrophe that hit Citigroup makes it clear just how crucial
the repeal of that act was to the financial meltdown to come…. And
Citigroup wasn’t alone. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke would
later testify that, by 2008, 11 out of the 12 biggest commercial banks were
‘insolvent’ and had to be bailed out. The entire banking system was rotten
to the core and the massive buildup of bad paper, high leverage, and
speculative bets (derivatives) that made disaster inevitable can be traced
directly back to the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
“Today, a fresh bubble is inflating. This time, it’s not U.S. subprime
mortgages at the heart of a budding banking crisis, but $51 trillion in
corporate debt in the form of bonds, loans, and related derivatives. The
credit ratings agency S&P Global Ratings has predicted that such debt
could rise to $75 trillion by 2020 and the defaults on it are starting to
increase in pace. Banks have profited by the short-term creation and trading
of this corporate debt, propagating even greater risk. Should that bubble
burst, it could make the subprime mortgage bubble of 2007 look like a
relatively small-scale event.”
In another broadside, former Reagan Administration Assistant Treasury
Secretary Paul Craig Roberts writes today, “Without Glass-Steagall
America Will Fail.” Roberts notes, “What we can say about the repeal of
Glass-Steagall is that it turned a somewhat egalitarian democracy with a
large middle class into the One Percent vs. the 99 percent. The repeal
resulted in the destruction of the United States as an open, prosperous
society. The electorate is very much aware of the decline in their economic
situation, and this awareness expressed itself in the last presidential
election.” And further, “the repeal of Glass-Steagall forced the 99 percent
to bail out the One Percent.”
“The question before Congress today,” Roberts writes, “is whether they
will take the country down for the sake of campaign contributions … or will
they take personal risks to save the country.”
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2017
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
Putin Urges Shanghai Cooperation Organization To Expand, Link
with EAEU, ASEAN, and BRI
June 10 (EIRNS)—Putin gave two speeches to the heads of state and
government the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) conference in
Astana Friday. In both, he began by welcoming India and Pakistan, which
became official SCO members, and saying that there are other countries
that wish to join and will be discussed.
“It is obvious that terrorism is the main threat for the SCO states,” Putin
told the restricted format meeting. “We keep saying that it is important to
join efforts of the entire international community to combat this evil…. We
have not yet managed to establish a fruitful, equal and constructive
interaction with our other partners outside the SCO. We see what is going
on in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the Middle East in general. I must say
that the domestic political environment in the United States does not help
bringing this interaction to a productive, system-wide level.”
He described Afghanistan as “the most serious source of threats to the
security of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization region.” The U.S. and
NATO have been at war in Afghanistan for 15 years, but “the country
keeps degrading.”
In this regard, Putin proposed reviving the SCO-Afghanistan Contact
Group, which was suspended in 2009. “Let’s think about using the SCO
platform to facilitate the dialogue between the Kabul government and the
opposition groups. I think our foreign ministries should be instructed to
develop concrete steps in this direction.”
In his later speech, the Russian President described China’s Belt and
Road Forum as a great success, and said: “Our goal is to combine the
potentials of the EAEU, the SCO, the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations, and China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative. These plans will be
discussed at the annual Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok in
September.”
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2017
The Asia-Latin America Trans-Pacific Cable Integral to the Belt and
Road
June 9 (EIRNS)—China and Chile have launched plans to build the great
Asia-Latin America Trans-Pacific Cable, an underwater fiber optic cable to
connect the two countries which, as described by Cronica Digital today, is
seen as “a takeoff point within the philosophy of the Belt and Road
conference” last month in Beijing.
A Memorandum of Understanding for the project was signed last
November, and Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet finalized details on it
during her recent state visit to China. According to Chile’s Deputy Minister
of Telecommunications Rodrigo Rodriguez, “Chile could be on the road to
creating the greatest connectivity hub in Latin America and the Caribbean,”
and serve as the “digital gateway” for China to the rest of the region. Prefeasibility
studies have just been completed, and final engineering and
technical feasibility studies are expected to be completed sometime in
2018. The estimated cost of the project is $550-$650 million, involving
between 20,000 and 24,000 km of cable.
There are three routes under discussion, all of which involve Shanghai
on the Chinese side, with different end-points in Chile. One route would
connect to the city of Valparaiso, and the two other routes would connect to
the far-southern city of Punta Arenas, but with different points in between.
A final decision on the route will be made later this year.
Chile has also launched a plan to provide a fiber optic cable network for
the very southern part of the country, where communications capabilities
are quite poor. The final bidding process for the Southern Fiber Optic
project will conclude in January 2018, and when it is completed in two
years it will have fully integrated Chile digitally from North to South.
Rodriguez points out that the new system will be a great benefit for
scientists working in Antarctica, as well.
India’s Modi and China’s Xi Meet on the Sidelines of the SCO Summit
June 9 (EIRNS)—The 17th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) took place in Astana,
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2017
Kazakhstan June 8-9, and culminated with the admission of India and
Pakistan as new members of the group—the first expansion of the SCO
since its inception in 2001. China will assume the rotating presidency of the
SCO for the coming year.
In addition issuing to a final communiqué and ten other documents, the
two-day gathering saw a number of bilateral meetings on the sidelines
which were of strategic importance. Russian President Vladimir Putin and
Chinese President Xi Jinping of course met, as expected, but there was also
a meeting between the Chinese President and Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi, which had remained unconfirmed until the last minute.
There are numerous points of tension between the two countries, which had
led the Modi government to foolishly boycott the May 14-15 Belt and Road
Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing. As Helga Zepp-LaRouche
explained at the time, the BRF and its global infrastructure development
activity is precisely the context—and the only context—in which such
pending geopolitical issues among nations can be successfully addressed. It
is noteworthy that, in his speech to the SCO summit, Xi Jinping announced
“China’s proposal for the SCO to draw up a five-year outline for
implementation of the Treaty on Long-Term Good Neighborliness,
Friendship and Cooperation.”
The Times of India reported that at their bilateral meeting, Modi thanked
Xi for China’s support of India’s membership in the SCO: “I got the
opportunity to meet you again during the SCO summit. I am grateful to you
for your efforts and support for India’s SCO membership.” Modi later
tweeted: “We spoke about India-China relations and how to further
improve ties.” Xi for his part emphasized that the two countries should
work to “appropriately” manage their differences: “There was also an
understanding that where we have differences, it was important that
differences should not become disputes, and in fact, if they were handled
well, could even become opportunities.”
This was the first meeting between Modi and Xi meeting this year. The
Times of India reported that they are expected to meet again in early July at
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2017
the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, and at the September 2017 BRICS
summit in Xiamen, China.
OTHER
Theresa May Hanging by a Thread
June 10 (EIRNS)—British Prime Minister Theresa May is desperately
trying to keep her job after the humiliating defeat for the Tories in the snap
election, where they lost their majority. She threw her two co-chiefs of
staff, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, to the wolves Saturday morning, trying
to dump the blame on them and avoid having to resign herself, as is being
widely demanded. (Note that her resignation would simply mean another
Tory, perhaps one as sick as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, taking over.)
She also deployed her chief whip, Gavin Williamson, to Belfast, to work
out a cooperation deal with the Democratic Union Party (DUP), Ian
Paisley’s creation, called a “confidence and supply” agreement, whereby
the 10 DUP Members of Parliament agree to vote with the government but
are not part of it.
If this effort succeeds, matters would be even worse for Northern
Ireland. The Daily Mail reports that Jonathan Powell, who helped negotiate
the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, warned yesterday: “Even John Major
didn’t resort to relying on DUP…. This could undo 20 years of work in
Northern Ireland.”
Under the Good Friday Agreement, the government in London is
supposed to be the “fair broker” between the unionists and the nationalists
led by Sinn Fein. The government can hardly be a fair broker if the DUP is
part of the government itself.
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams spoke out against the deal: “History will
show, alliances between Ulster unionism and British unionism has always
ended in tears,” he said. “It is far better to look to our own place, to all of
the people here, to deal with the people of this island, this part of the island
as one community.”
