EDITORIAL
Think and Act Outside the Box
Aug. 24 (EIRNS)—“This is really a grave moment,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche stressed in a discussion with associates yesterday, “and we have to get people to understand that the coup against President Trump is still ongoing, and must be reversed by changing the agenda completely,” by organizing a dramatic national mobilization for physical economic recovery based on full-scale cooperation with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
“The game is obviously to box Trump in, so that he cannot fulfill his domestic agenda of job creation, and so that he cannot stick to his promises concerning the international policies of stopping these wars,” Zepp-LaRouche said. Certain military circles in the U.S. are clearly attempting to get Trump to back off on his stated policy of ending the Bush-Obama era wars; but “if we stick with geopolitics, we are all doomed,” Zepp-LaRouche stated.
The policies now being implemented regarding Ukraine, Afghanistan, and elsewhere are terrible; only in Syria is there an example of the right policy of cooperation with Russia to jointly combat ISIS terrorism.
Both Russia and China continue to extend their hand to the Trump administration to offer ways out of the box, including cooperation on economic and political issues internationally. And the Belt and Road global economic development program continues to move forward, now focused on two key international meetings in early September: the BRICS summit in Xiamen, China (Sept. 3-5); and the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia (Sept. 6-7).
But the key to solving the strategic crisis remains in the United States, where it is urgent to turn the tables on the ongoing attempted coup against Trump, by getting the President and his team to thinkoutside the box, and act outside the box. Trump hasn’t felt sufficient backup so far from his base of supporters, Zepp-LaRouche commented, to be able to break free from the negative pressures he is receiving from those trying to oust him from the Presidency. Trump’s base of support in the American population remains strong, but far too many of them have allowed themselves to be manipulated into getting all worked up over silly, tertiary issues—the wall, Obamacare, a barroom brawl over statues.
These are distractions. Don’t debate such issues; dismiss them. The life and death policy matter facing the country is to get the Trump administration to join with China and Russia to build the World Land-Bridge (which will require bankrupting Wall Street and the City of London with Glass-Steagall), and putting an end to British geopolitics and wars once and for all.
Doing that—just starting to do that—will do wonders to stop the attempted coup d’état in its tracks.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
State Department’s Nauert: U.S. is striving for better relations with Russia
Aug. 24 (EIRNS)—U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters on Aug 23 that the U.S. continues to strive for better relations with Russia.
“We have said since the beginning of this administration that we are at a low level of trust between the United States and Russia. We don’t want it that way. We would like to have a better relationship with that government, no doubt about it,” she said, responding to a reporter’s question about whether a Cold War is developing between Moscow and Washington.
“We continue to try to find areas of mutual cooperation with them. We’ve talked about the ceasefire in Southwest Syria that is held where we’ve been working with the Russians. We continue to work for ways that we have areas of mutual interest that we can work on, but in terms of what’s going on with our Embassy in Moscow we consider that to be regrettable,” Nauert said.
Hun Sen Throws NDI Out of Cambodia for Organizing Color Revolution
Aug. 24 (EIRNS)—Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered the National Democratic Institute (NDI, whose Chairwoman is Madeline Albright) out of the country on Wednesday, telling the foreign members they had seven days to leave the country. The NDI and its sister organization, International Republican Institute (IRI, chaired by John McCain), are the two wings of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the core regime-change institution in the U.S., funded by the government, which is at the center of every color revolution around the world in tandem with the George Soros funded operations.
The DNI has worked directly with the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), a merger of the Human Rights Party and the Sam Rainsy Party. Rainsy is the French-Cambodian banker who has run operations against Hun Sen for decades, while the Human Rights Party is essentially a creation of the NDI.
According to the Cambodia Daily, a mouthpiece for the opposition, “Radio Free Asia and Voice of America have also both been accused of not fulfilling tax and registration obligations. The Cambodia Daily, whose publisher is a U.S. citizen, was hit with a $6.3 million unaudited tax bill and threatened with imminent closure if it is not paid by September 4.”
The U.S. Embassy in Phnom Phen issued a statement denouncing the action and questioning the government’s commitment to democracy. Hun Sen responded that America’s version of democracy was “bloody and brutal,” and that Cambodia does not need to be instructed in democracy. He reminded the world that the NDI and the U.S. government openly supported the Khmer Rouge for years after Vietnam helped Hun Sen and others crush the genocidal regime and establish a new government. The western press still today refers to Hun Sen as a “former Khmer Rouge officer,” leaving out that he was part of the revolt against them when they showed their genocidal intentions, while also leaving out the West’s support for the Khmer Rouge for over a decade against Hun Sen’s government.
In a Press TV interview today, EIR’s Mike Billington reviewed the LaRouche movement’s leading role in defending the Cambodian government under Hun Sen against the NDI and IRI run subversion efforts over the past several decades, including Gail Billington’s interviews with the Prime Minister for EIR in the 1990s.
Trump and Tillerson Hopeful on North Korea
Aug. 24 (EIRNS)—Despite the ongoing major U.S.-R.O.K. military exercises Ulchi Freedom Guardian, which, according to some reports, include “decapitation” exercises to offensively take out North Korean nuclear capacities and the regime leadership, North Korea nonetheless continues to refrain from either verbal threats or further missile or bomb tests.
President Trump, in Phoenix Tuesday night, said “I believe he is starting to respect us. I respect that fact very much…. And maybe—probably not—but maybe something positive can come about.”
Also on Tuesday, in his press conference on Afghan policy, Secretary Rex Tillerson was direct: “We have had no missile launches or provocative acts on the part of North Korea since the unanimous adoption of the UN Security Council resolution. We hope that this is the beginning of this signal that we’ve been looking for – that they are ready to restrain their level of tensions, they’re ready to restrain their provocative acts, and that perhaps we are seeing our pathway to sometime in the near future having some dialogue.”
While the tension remains, North Korea is engaged in direct diplomacy with Russia, China, Japan, and the U.S. There has been only brief contact with South Korean officials, at least publicly, but South Korean President Moon Jae-in is implementing a major push for cooperation with Russia in East Asia, including development cooperation between Russia, North Korea and South Korea, which was cancelled under former President Park Geun-hye.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
U.S.-Russian Deconfliction Line in Syria Is “Humming Along”
Aug. 24 (EIRNS)—A Reuters reporter was given the opportunity to tour the U.S. Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at Al Udeid air base in Qatar earlier this week, and he reported that the U.S.-Russian deconfliction line for Syria is “humming” right along. “Even as tensions between the United States and Russia fester, there is one surprising place where their military-to-military contacts are quietly weathering the storm: Syria,” reports Reuters. U.S. and Russian officers are regularly communicating on the separation line in Syria between U.S.-and Russian-backed forces. There are 10-12 calls a day on the phone line between the CAOC and the Russian headquarters in Latakia, which helps to keep U.S. and Russian planes apart.
“That is no small task, given the complexities of Syria’s civil war,” Reuters reported. “The reality is we’ve worked through some very hard problems and, in general, we have found a way to maintain the deconfliction line and found a way to continue our mission,” Lieutenant General Jeffrey Harrigian, the top U.S. Air Force commander in the Middle East, said in an interview. “We have to negotiate, and sometimes the phone calls are tense. Because for us, this is about protecting ourselves, our coalition partners and destroying the enemy,” Harrigian said, without commenting on the volume of calls. Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the U.S. commander of the anti-ISIS campaign, added that “The Russians have been nothing but professional, cordial and disciplined.”
It’s Britain’s Dope, Inc., Stupid
Aug. 24 (EIRNS)—A number of non-mainstream media outlets are beginning to point out that the big elephant in the room in the discussion of how to deal with Afghanistan and Taliban terrorism, is drugs. But no one—other than LaRouche PAC—has had the courage to state who put that elephant in the room, and how to get rid of him (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgpg7zInvZ0). It is the British Empire’s bankrupt trans-Atlantic banks that run Dope, Inc., and the entire international drug trade, including associated terrorism. Want to stop drugs and terrorism? Want to win the misnomered “Afghan war?” Start by using Glass-Steagall to bury the City of London and Wall Street financial apparatus, and then work closely with Russia and China to wipe out the narco-terrorist networks, and build the World Land-Bridge.
The Aug. 24 Asian Pacific Post reported on recent comments made in Kabul, Afghanistan by William Brownfield, U.S. Assistant Secretary for Drugs and Law Enforcement: “I pretty firmly feel they [the Taliban] are processing all the [poppy] harvest. Everything they harvest is duly processed inside the country. They receive more revenues if they process it before it has left the country. Obviously we are dealing with very loose figures, but drug trafficking amounts to billions of dollars every year from which the Taliban is taking a substantial percentage.”
The same article quoted an unnamed senior Western official saying that Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand is a “big drug factory. Helmand is all about drugs, poppy and Taliban. Most of their funding comes from the poppy, morphine labs, heroin labs. Of course they have their own labs.” What the official failed to mention, however, is that Helmand province has for years been under the control of the British, as part of the NATO deployment into Afghanistan.
Similarly, an article by retired DEA special agent Jeffrey James Higgins in the Aug. 24 theamericanconservative.com correctly emphasized the central role of drugs in Afghanistan, but it too failed to point the finger at the British and the banks. “In Afghanistan, the longest war in U.S. history cannot be won without confronting narco-terrorism… Afghanistan now supplies more than 75% of the world’s heroin… Afghanistan serves as a primary hub where the world’s largest drug trafficking groups directly support Islamic terrorism. There will be none of Trump’s promise of victory without confronting these dark truths.”
The Duran reported on Aug. 23 that the alleged mastermind of the recent Barcelona terrorist attack “was a convicted drug trafficker,” and used this fact to argue that “the elephant in the room is drugs and the fact is that most suicide bombers are on drugs both before and at the time of their atrocity… Terrorism is a drug problem, not a religious problem.” The article stated that there are “dangerous links between the illegal international narcotics trade and deadly terrorism,” but did not even come close to explaining that those street-level links are a result of the top-level, centralized coordination of both drugs and terrorism through Britain’s Dope, Inc. apparatus.
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
South Korea Expands Cooperation with Russia
Aug. 24 (EIRNS)—South Korean President Moon Jae-in announced the formation of a Presidential Northern Economic Cooperation Committee on Aug. 21, aimed at creating close economic cooperation with Russia in the development of East Asia, including the Russian Far East, and resolving the North Korea issue through joint regional development. Business Korea reports that “The roles of the committee include the expansion of cooperation with Eurasian and Northeast Asian countries in such fields as energy, transportation and logistics.”
The Committee is headed by Song Young-gil, the former Mayor of Inchon, who was appointed special envoy to Russia soon after Moon took office. The committee includes representatives of the ministries of Strategy & Finance, Foreign Affairs, Unification, and Trade, Industry & Energy, as a well as about 25 representatives of the private sector.
President Moon also announced that he will hold a private meeting with President Vladimir Putin during his attendance at the Eastern Economic Forum, the annual conference in Vladivostok focused on regional development, on Sept. 6-7, where Moon also will give a keynote address. Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha left for Moscow today for meetings on Friday with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
Moon has proposed a “New Korean Peninsula Economic Map” which calls for reviving and expanding trilateral cooperation between Seoul, Pyongyang and Moscow. Song Young-gil, speaking at a seminar in July, directly called for the resumption of the three-way cooperation at the North Korea port of Rajin, a project that was shut down by former President Park Geun-hye when she capitulated to Obama’s demands to isolate both North Korea and Russia.
Moon will also speak at the opening of the UN in September in New York. In November he will attend the APEC Summit in Vietnam and the ASEAN + 3 Summit in the Philippines.
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
BRICS under China’s Chairmanship has Reached the “Second Golden Decade”, Says Ryabkov
Aug. 24 (EIRNS)—In an interview with Xinhua on Aug. 22, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the BRICS mechanism under China’s chairmanship this year has entered the second golden decade, following a decade of prosperity. “We do not see a deceleration in BRICS development nor a fading interest of any partner in this format. We note with great satisfaction that BRICS continues to consolidate and be approved in the international arena and it has become an indispensable factor in influencing international affairs,” he told Xinhua. Ryabkov’s remarks pertain to the upcoming summit in China’s southeastern coastal city of Xiamen on Sept. 3-5 where leaders of the five BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—will meet.
Similar views were expressed by David Thomas, chief executive officer of Think Global, a Sydney-based consultant firm, who spoke exclusively to Xinhua today saying the BRICS nations are “stepping into the vacuum of global leadership” that has been created by the withdrawal of the countries, particularly those in the West, previously associated with worldwide leadership. Another observer, David Gosset, founder of the Europe-China Forum and the New Silk Road Initiative, told Xinhua during an interview that “within less than a decade, the BRICS Summit has evolved into an impactful forum whose importance is proportionate with the growing economic and political weight of its members.” He noted that the Xiamen Summit “will send a strong signal to the world of the growing significance of developing countries, and that globalizing forces have shifted from western countries to emerging economies,” Xinhua reported today.
Meanwhile, reports from New Delhi indicate that a team has been sent to Xiamen to arrange meetings—on the sidelines of the BRICS summit—for the Indian premier Narendra Modi with leaders from across South East and Central Asia, Africa & North America, who will be attending the Summit. There had been some uncertainty as to whether or not Modi would participate in the BRICS summit, in light of unresolved tensions with host China, and Modi’s decision earlier this year to boycott the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing.
China has invited leaders of Thailand, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Egypt, Guinea (African Union chair) and Mexico as part of BRICS outreach. There are reports that leaders of Tajikistan and Philippines could also be part of this outreach exercise, The Economic Times reported.
China Escalates Its Rail Construction
Aug. 24 (EIRNS)—While China now is working on a new aerodynamic model for its next generation high-speed rail to achieve an operating speed of 350 Km/hr, it has also announced a more elaborate program for expanding the rail network. Since it began its work on high-speed rail in the 1990s, network planning was based on the notion of creating four major north-south lines and four major east-west lines to bring the country into a single network. But the development has moved so rapidly that the plan now is to double that, creating eight north-south lines and eight east-west lines. The railroad authorities are now focused on building 40,000 kilometers of high-speed rail and 200,000 kilometers of total rail.
Just as a comment on the hyperbole around the campaign of China “stealing” Western technology, as noted recently by Liu Zhiqun from Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies. The Chinese readily admit that they have borrowed – and, in some cases, have purchased – original designs of high-speed rail, studying particularly the German and the Japanese systems. But over the period of the last 25 years Chinese engineers have continually developed the original ideas, producing a product which is far superior to the ones they originally based themselves on and creating a high-speed rail network that is far superior to any in the world, with the element of speed representing only a small indication of the advances they have made. They in turn, Liu notes, through their export of these technologies to other countries are ready to share the advances they have made to help other countries do the same.
