Volume 4, Number 158

EIR Daily Alert Service

P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390

• VIPS Exposure of the Fraud Behind Russia-gate Breaks Out in The Nation
• The Nation Runs Excellent Review of VIPS Exposure of Russia-gate
• Editor of The Nation Hits ‘Unholy Alliance between Hawkish Democrats and Neoconservatives’
• Project Democracy Hitmen Protest Tillerson Moving Away from Color Revolutions
• Foreign Minister Gabriel Attacks New U.S. Russian Sanctions in German Interview
• Western Hemisphere Foreign Ministers Further Polarize the Americas around Venezuelan Crisis
• Erik Prince Pitches Plan To Privatize Afghanistan War
• U.S. Torture Architects To Face Trial
• South Korean Presidential Office: There’s Still No Imminent Crisis
• Amidst North Korea Hysteria, Saner Voices Are Heard
• South Africa’s Zuma Survives No Confidence Vote, ANC Skewers Regime-Change Attempt
• Rosatom, Chinese Investment Fund To Build Nuclear Power Stations
• China Helps Launch $13 Billion Belt and Road Rail Project in Malaysia

EDITORIAL

VIPS Exposure of the Fraud Behind Russia-gate Breaks Out in The Nation

Aug. 9 (EIRNS)—The Nation, the oldest journal in the United States and one of the most widely read publications among liberals and progressives, has published a powerful and comprehensive report on the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) exposure of the Russia-gate hoax, after interviewing four of the principal VIPS members on their work. The author, Patrick Lawrence, warns of the war danger generated by the anti-Russian hysteria, based on lies, concluding: “The investigators deserve a response, the betrayed professionals who formed VIPS as the WMD scandal unfolded in 2003 deserve it, and so do the rest of us. The cost of duplicity has rarely been so high.”

The LaRouche movement took it upon itself to get the VIPS report out to the world, to break through the refusal of the Congress to investigate it, and the refusal of the media to cover it. While circulating it worldwide since its release in July, LaRouchePAC volunteers have delivered the report to every member of the House and Senate Intelligence and Judicial Committees. Today another team is getting the report into the Old Executive Office Building and the Department of Justice.

President Trump and Secretary Tillerson have made it abundantly clear that the world’s two nuclear superpowers must be friends, not enemies. The President also directly named the Congress as the responsible party for the dangerous state of affairs between these two nations, following the despicable near-unanimous Congressional votes to impose sanctions on Russia, and even on the businesses of our allies that do business with Russia. The Congress must be forced to end the McCarthyite witchhunt, and to launch instead a full investigation into the lies of the war party, using the evidence in the VIPS report.

The war party is equally engaged in the current escalating hysteria about North Korea. While the Western press is full of wailing headlines, based on a fake “leak” in the Washington Post from an unnamed intelligence source, that North Korea is capable and prepared to nuke Guam, or even San Francisco or Washington (a lie easily refuted by any competent scientist or intelligence professional), the South Korean President’s office spokesperson told the press a very different story: “I do not agree with the claim that the Korean Peninsula faces an imminent crisis,” he said on background. He acknowledged that the crisis was serious, but added: “We are working to fundamentally resolve the North Korean nuclear and missile issues at the earliest date possible, and are working with a belief that the possibility is very high.”  U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson similarly told the press: “I do not believe there is any imminent threat, in my own view.”

The war party is intent on driving President Trump into a war with Russia and China, and to so terrify the American population that they will support it, or at least go along with it, as they did in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. The problem lies in the psychological conditioning of the population over the generations since the death of Franklin Roosevelt, and especially since the assassination of Jack Kennedy. It is the British problem—the acceptance of empire, of geopolitics, that we can only get ahead at the expense of others, that mankind is no different from the dog-eat-dog world of wild animals. That British ideology rejects the very existence of a common aim for mankind as a whole, of what Xi Jinping calls “win-win” at the basis of the New Silk Road. It rejects the potential for creativity in every human being, which is the basis for human progress—which was once the common element of the American spirit.

This cultural decay was launched after JFK’s assassination, with the calculated inundation of the population with drugs, with increasingly degenerate noise passed off as music, with anti-science green propaganda, and with the substitution of unrestrained liberty for freedom. Now, the American population is experiencing the results: the worst drug crisis in history, affecting every family, while our industry has collapsed and the cities are crumbling, as in Manhattan.

These things cannot be simply fixed. It is the system, the British system, which has failed, and must be replaced, with a new application of the American System, as is now being implemented under China’s leadership—the New Silk Road to peace through development. Trump has committed himself and the nation to this new paradigm, but must be freed from the “color revolution” being waged against him by the war party. The VIPS report destroys the entire framework of the war party’s treason against America and the human race. Circulate it everywhere.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

The Nation Runs Excellent Review of VIPS Exposure of Russia-gate

Aug. 9 (EIRNS)—The Nation has published an excellent report on the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) exposure of the fraud of Russia-gate, demonstrating that there was no hack of the DNC computers in the first place, but an inside leak provided to WikiLeaks. The article is certain to be widely circulated among the base support for the liberals in the Congress who are co-responsible for the crisis, for the recent Congressional sanctions, and for the looming danger of thermonuclear war.

The author is Patrick Lawrence, a historian and journalist, who personally interviewed four of the primary members of the VIPS, reviews their high-level CVs, and reports extensively on their primary findings.

Lawrence begins with a warning of the deadly serious nature of the crisis created by the Russophobia and the intelligence fraud. He then usefully reviews earlier intelligence frauds in U.S. history which were perpetrated to justify wars or coups, such the sinking of the Maine, and the lies about Mossadegh and Ho Chi Minh. He continues: “It is an odd sensation to live through one of these episodes, especially one as big as Russia-gate. But its place atop a long line of precedents can no longer be disputed.”

He concludes: “The investigators deserve a response, the betrayed professionals who formed VIPS as the WMD [weapons of mass destruction] scandal unfolded in 2003 deserve it, and so do the rest of us. The cost of duplicity has rarely been so high.”

Editor of The Nation Hits ‘Unholy Alliance between Hawkish Democrats and Neoconservatives’

Aug. 9 (EIRNS)—While The Nation is running a powerful article on the VIPS exposure of the fraud of Russia-gate, its editor and publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post today under the headline “The Emerging Unholy Alliance Between Hawkish Democrats and Neoconservatives.” She identifies the anti-Russia hysteria being driven equally by the neoconservatives who gave us the Iraq War, and the Obama Democrats (vanden Heuvel calls them the “indispensable-nation crowd personified by Hillary Clinton”) who ran the destruction of Libya and the Syrian fiasco.

She writes: “Illustrative of their emerging alliance … is yet another Beltway foreign policy initiative: the Alliance for Securing Democracy. The Alliance describes itself as a bipartisan, transatlantic initiative focused on Russia. Its purpose is to develop comprehensive strategies to defend against, deter and raise the costs on Russian and other actors, while working to expose Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe. Consider this an updated version of Kristol and Robert Kagan’s 1997 Project for the New American Century, which fulminated for the invasion of Iraq. The Alliance’s Advisory Council includes Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s foreign policy advisor, and Mike Morell, acting CIA director under Obama. They sit comfortably with Kristol, Mike Chertoff, Homeland Security Secretary under Bush, and hawkish former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers. With a record of catastrophic foreign policy fiascoes, the establishment comes together to strike back.”

Vanden Heuvel offers no solutions, and doesn’t even try, but at least exposes the evil intention of the “unholy alliance,” and concludes: “Now the country is in dire need of new thinking on our national security strategy.”

Project Democracy Hitmen Protest Tillerson Moving Away from Color Revolutions

Aug. 9 (EIRNS)—Rukmani Bhatia, Research Coordinator for the “Freedom in the World and Freedom of the Press” of that nasty right-wing intelligence front called Freedom House, worried yesterday on the Freedom House website that “democracy promotion” is being “quietly erased” under President Trump’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. References to “democratic governance” have been excluded from formal messages of greetings sent to various nations recently, Bhatia complains, and reports are circulating that “Tillerson plans to remove reference to democracy promotion—a central pillar of U.S. foreign policy—from the State Department’s mission statement.”

That would be big. “Democracy promotion” has been the Orwellian name attached to the British colonial foreign policy adopted by the United States under the Anglophile Wall Street traitors—Dulles brothers, et al.—who increasingly seized control in the post-Franklin Roosevelt era. Coups and destabilizations, by the military or by “color revolution,” for decades have been carried out in the name “democracy,” from Truman through to Barack Obama and his installation of a Nazi government in Ukraine. The hand of Freedom House could be found in most of those operations, and they are still at it. In June 2017, long-time senior Freedom House operative Arch Puddington issued a 64-page tract targetting Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping as exemplars of “modern authoritarians” who must be driven from power.

Foreign Minister Gabriel Attacks New U.S. Russian Sanctions in German Interview

Aug. 9 (EIRNS)—German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) again slammed the latest U.S. sanctions against Russia in an Aug. 8 interview with Westfälische Nachrichten newspaper, reported TASS today. “It is important for us, the so-called West, to stick together,” he said. “The law on imposing sanctions passed last week is detrimental to that.”

He said he believed U.S. President Donald Trump needed “close coordination [with European partners] before putting sanctions in place. Moreover, sanctions against European companies are totally inadmissible.” He also emphasized, “Cooperation between Russians and Americans is necessary in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, in the fight against the Islamic State and on many other issues.”

Western Hemisphere Foreign Ministers Further Polarize the Americas around Venezuelan Crisis

Aug. 9 (EIRNS)—Following a two-day meeting in Lima, Peru, 12 Western Hemisphere foreign ministers, not including the United States, issued the “Lima Declaration” yesterday, declaring Venezuela to be a dictatorship and a pariah nation.

While claiming to favor dialogue and negotiations, the declaration offers no solutions and will only serve to further inflame a crisis that has already divided the Americas. In the 2000s, there was the informal “Presidents Club” led by Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, which dealt successfully with regional crises through collaboration and dialogue. Absent such a mechanism today, London is barreling forward to blow up Venezuela—and the entire region.

Attending the Lima meeting were the foreign ministers of Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and Peru. Politically, the U.S. could not attend, so the Queen’s representative, Canada, attended in its stead. Lined up against the dozen are Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and most of the Caribbean nations.

The declaration gives full support to the National Assembly (Venezuela’s legislature, dominated today by the opposition), and condemns the unconstitutional Constituent Assembly illegally created by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to replace the National Assembly. The declaration denounces violence and violation of human rights, and backs Venezuela’s expulsion from the Common Market of the South (Mercosur).

Meanwhile, Colombia and Brazil are bracing for the influx of tens of thousands of refugees from Venezuela, Breitbart News reported Aug. 7. Cucuta, Colombia and Roraima, Brazil are the two main crossing points. The number of Venezuelans entering Brazil have already doubled compared to 2016, and the Colombian government is said to be studying the Syrian migrant crisis to prepare the country for new refugees. Colombia already has the largest internally displaced population in the world, as a result of its decades-long fight with the narco-terrorist FARC. It is woefully unprepared to handle an influx of Venezuelans, who are entering the country at a rate of 25,000 a day.

Erik Prince Pitches Plan To Privatize Afghanistan War

Aug. 9 (EIRNS)—USA Today reported, yesterday, that the White House “is actively considering a bold plan to turn over a big chunk of the U.S. war in Afghanistan to private contractors.” Under the plan, the 8,400 U.S. troops would be replaced by 5,500 contractors with a 90-plane private air force. “The plan remains under serious consideration within the White House despite misgivings by National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and Secretary of Defense James Mattis,” the daily says.

The man behind the plan, Erik Prince, infamous for founding the Blackwater private military contractor, appeared on CBS News’ ”This Morning” yesterday to sell it to the public.

“At what point do you say a conventional military approach in Afghanistan is not working,” asked Prince. “Maybe we say that at 16 years.” He was careful to avoid making it appear that he was looking to get the contract for his company, Frontier Services Group, but he claimed he could reduce the U.S. cost of the war from $45 billion a year to less than $10 billion. “Look, if it comes to a bid or whatever, if someone’s able to come up with a solution that saves taxpayers $40 billion, I think anyone should compete and do that,” he said. Prince, who sold the Blackwater mercenary outfit in 2010, insisted that any contractor confronting that problem ought to be able to get the contract. “That’s capitalism,” he said.

In reality, what Prince is pitching, is what he’s always been doing, that is, following the model of the British East India Company of looting, and privatizing war and making a tidy profit from it along the way.

U.S. Torture Architects To Face Trial

Aug. 9 (EIRNS)—The two psychiatrists who designed the torture program for George W. Bush’s CIA, trained them, and helped implement the program, are going to stand trial in Federal court Spokane, Washington. U.S. District Judge Justin Quackenbush ruled Aug. 7 that the evidence provided by lawyers from ACLU on behalf of three CIA torture victims (one of whom died under torture) was adequate to throw out efforts to dismiss. The trial is scheduled to start Sept. 5.

A jury will hear the lawsuit, Salim v. Mitchell against James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen, under the Alien Tort Statute on charges of committing torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, non-consensual human experimentation and war crimes; the statute gives Federal courts jurisdiction to hear lawsuits brought by non-U.S. citizens. This will be the first court hearing on the Bush torture program.

The three plaintiffs were kidnapped by the CIA and tortured and experimented upon according to Mitchell and Jessen’s protocols, according to ACLU, reported the Spokane Review. One of the men died as a result of the torture. The other two continue to suffer the effects of the physical and psychological torture inflicted on them, their defense argues.

“This is a historic day for our clients and all who seek accountability for torture,” ACLU attorney Dror Ladin told AP. “The courts ruling means that for the first time, individuals responsible for the brutal and unlawful CIA torture program will face meaningful legal accountability for what they did. Our clients have waited a long time for justice.”

The torture included water boarding, physical assaults, sleep deprivation, forced to stand for days in diapers with their arms chained overhead, doused with ice water, and stuffed into boxes, the ACLU said.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

South Korean Presidential Office: There’s Still No Imminent Crisis

Aug. 9 (EIRNS)—Despite all of the fire and brimstone rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang, officials in Seoul still insist that the crisis involving North Korea is imminently resolvable. An official from Seoul’s presidential office, speaking on background, said that the North Korean threat may have been multipurposed but not to incite an actual conflict.

“I do not agree with the claim that the Korean Peninsula faces an imminent crisis,” the official said. “It is true the situation on the Korean Peninsula is becoming very serious due to North Korea’s repeated provocations, though many believe they are rather strategic provocations. We are working to fundamentally resolve the North Korean nuclear and missile issues at the earliest date possible, and are working with a belief that the possibility is very high,” the official said. “However, I do not believe the situation has reached a state of crisis, and rather think we may turn this into an opportunity to overcome the serious security condition.”

As for the North Korean People’s Army statement that it was “carefully examining” plans to strike the U.S. territory of Guam, the official said that it may have had a number of purposes, “such as creating security concerns in our country, weakening the Korea-U.S. alliance and also forcing the United States to somewhat loosen up its North Korea policy,” the official said. He warned Pyongyang, however, that “the situation is becoming less and less favorable to the North. We urge the North to quickly respond to our reasonable offers.”

Amidst North Korea Hysteria, Saner Voices Are Heard

Aug. 9 (EIRNS)—Predictably, President Donald Trump’s statement yesterday that threats from North Korea will be met with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” unleashed a wave of hysterical media coverage and commentary, railing against him while predicting that war is inevitable.

Yet in South Korea, according to the Korea Herald, government officials maintain that the crisis is eminently solvable and that there is no cause for alarm.

Similarly, in remarks to CNN, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson focused on the need for calm and diplomacy. Explaining that Trump was only using the same strong rhetoric as Pyongyang, he reassured Americans that “they should sleep well at night,” as “I do not believe there is any imminent threat in my own view.” According to ABC News, Tillerson said that the U.S. wasn’t closer to military action, and that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un still has a way out, through dialogue. “Whether we’ve got them backed into a corner or not is difficult to say,” Tillerson averred, “but diplomatically you never like to have someone in a corner without a way for them to get out.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov remarked that bellicose North Korean statements are a standard response to imposition of UN Security Council sanctions, Sputnik reported. “We will judge [them] by their actions,” he said, and emphasized there’s no alternative to the resumption of the political process and, in particular, to the six-party talks. “We will certainly continue our dialogue with our North Korean neighbors,” he affirmed, and “we expect that with the prudent approach of all players, naturally including the United States, the Republic of Korea, and Japan, we will be able to find a solution that suits all parties.”

During the just-concluded ASEAN summit in Manila, Lavrov met with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho to discuss bilateral issues and the situation on the Korean Peninsula. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi also met with Ri, and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warmly greeted the North Korean minister as a guest at ASEAN’s 50th anniversary celebration. Although Ri did not meet formally with South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-Wa, the two spoke briefly prior to the ASEAN Regional Forum dinner on Aug. 5

As reported by the Washington Examiner Aug. 8, Russia’s new UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia, stated that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula will remain difficult as long as North Korea perceives a direct threat to its security, saying: “That is how the North Koreans view the military buildup in the region, which takes the form of frequent, wide-ranging exercises and maneuvers of the U.S. and allies as they deploy strategic bombers, naval forces, and aircraft carriers.”

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

South Africa’s Zuma Survives No Confidence Vote, ANC Skewers Regime-Change Attempt

Aug. 9 (EIRNS)—South African President Jacob Zuma yesterday narrowly survived a vote of no confidence by secret ballot, in which at least 26 MPs of his own party, the African National Congress (ANC), must have voted against him. Had only 11 more MPs voted against him, Zuma and his cabinet would have had to resign. In a National Assembly of 400 seats, the ANC has 249. The opposition was jubilant about having come so close.

It was the sixth no-confidence vote against Zuma since 2010 (or 7th, or 8th, depending on what is counted), in a process in which the British-owned opposition parties and the mass media carry out propaganda warfare to vilify Zuma and his ANC faction, punctuated by the no-confidence votes. Behind it all is the real, unnamed issue: Will Zuma and his faction succeed in their turn to the East, to adopt some approximation of Hamiltonian economics, as China has done, or will the British Empire prevail?

In the debate preceding yesterday’s vote, the ANC took a turn in the right direction. Its MPs accused the opposition of attempting regime change, as seen in these extracts:

Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa: “A ramification of the unipolar world order is the demand for regime change around the globe … to remove those who refuse to kow-tow to an oppressive global hegemony. Similarly, the call for regime change in South Africa today is to destabilize and subvert our democratic order. [He then took apart the opposition’s “narrative” about Zuma’s firing the British-run Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.] … Thus this motion is based on fake news. The target of this motion is the authority of government; they aim for a coup d’état to overthrow a legitimate government through destabilization.”

Deputy Chief Whip Doris Dlakude: “This insurrectionist opposition … has a stated intention of regime change, to manipulate the legislature and constitution to collapse government and sow the seeds of chaos to ultimately grab power.”

Defense Minister Nosisiwe Mapisa-Nqakula: “Let us go to a general election. Let us not use other tactics to get rid of a ruling party. That would be akin to a coup.”

The opposition went crazy, interrupting again and again with purported points of order, to which the Deputy Speaker responded: “That is not a point of order, and screaming will not make it so.”

Only days before the vote, LaRouche South Africa had circulated to MPs and many others, a paper on the same wavelength as the ANC speakers, stating:

“The British and their agents are pulling out all the stops of their Mighty Wurlitzer to push South Africans’ buttons with every conceivable half-truth, lie, and fantasy against the Zuma government and the ANC. Thus, every so often, one of the opposition parties calls for a vote of no confidence as a kind of battering ram … with the ultimate goal of toppling him, and splintering his faction and the ANC at large.”

To prevail, Zuma’s government must be even more bold in turning away from the British trans-Atlantic Empire and towards the BRICS and the East—by asserting leadership in the credit-directed development of Africa, and the building up of South Africa’s capabilities for that purpose. Only through the victory of this new world order is regime change defeated.

Rosatom, Chinese Investment Fund To Build Nuclear Power Stations

Aug. 9 (EIRNS)—Russia’s state-owned nuclear power plant engineering company Rosatom and the Russian-Chinese Investment Fund of Regional Development signed a memorandum of partnership to build and finance Russian-designed nuclear power plants in third countries. According to TASS the two parties agreed to “work out and ensure financial support to various joint areas of activities in the nuclear sector.” The agreement also covers cooperation in the production and processing of mineral raw materials for Russia’s nuclear industry and in other innovation developments.  The Russian-Chinese Investment Fund of Regional Development was created earlier this year.

China Helps Launch $13 Billion Belt and Road Rail Project in Malaysia

Aug. 9 (EIRNS)— China and Malaysia broke ground today on a $13 billion rail project linking peninsular Malaysia’s east and west, the largest such project in the country and a major part of Beijing’s Belt and Road infrastructure push.

The planned 688km East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) will connect the South China Sea at the Thai border in the east with the strategic shipping routes of the Straits of Malacca in the west. It is among the most prominent projects in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Speaking at the ceremony halfway along the route, in Kuantan, which faces the South China Sea, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak remarked that “the ECRL is indeed yet another ‘game changer’ and a ‘mindset changer’ for Malaysia as it will significantly cut travel time to and from the east coast of the peninsula.” Also present at the Kuantan ceremony, heading up a 100-person delegation, was Chinese State Councillor Wang Yang, who emphasized that his government attaches “great importance to China-Malaysia relations and has always considered Malaysia a dear neighbor and trustworthy partner who is committed to seeking mutually beneficial cooperation and common development in the country.”