EDITORIAL
What Lyndon LaRouche Had Forecast Is Here
Sept. 14 (EIRNS)—The fact that President Trump has begun to work with top Congressional Democrats since Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, in order to jointly achieve urgently needed results for the American people, has been startling to many—but not to readers of the Alert. EIR Founding Editor Lyndon LaRouche forecast on the occasion of his 90th birthday, just five years ago, that the “two-party system,” which was an abomination to the founders of our Constitution, was in the process of being eliminated. A series of unprecedented events, totally unexpected by others, but forecast, in principle, by LaRouche, have brought us closer to that result today, than anyone else expected even as recently as just a few weeks ago!
One immediate result of this change is that it must help in the fight for Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Laws, starting with the restoration of the original Glass-Steagall Act, in a circumstance where this President campaigned for office pledging to restore that act, while many leading Democrats are on record for it as well. This at a time when even the ultra-liberal Adam Smith Institute of Britain is warning of a near-term blowout of the financial system, as noted yesterday. The case could not be more urgent.
Still, the British are not going to give up on sinking this Presidency, as they never gave up on sinking Franklin Roosevelt. We must continue the campaign on the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) report exposing the fraud of Russiagate. Along the lines of the campaigns discussed at the Sept. 9 Manhattan EIR conference, the VIPS report should be read into the Congressional Record. President Trump should force his CIA Director Mike Pompeo to produce the relevant truthful documentation.
A beautiful illustration of the meaning and the inner consistency of Lyndon LaRouche’s Four New Laws of June 2014, came to light in a Sept. 12 celebration in flood-ravaged Houston, which is reported from onsite by LaRouche PAC Policy Committee member Kesha Rogers immediately below. As she writes there, an unexpectedly huge crowd of 1,000 assembled at Rice University to celebrate President Kennedy’s famous “Moon Speech” of exactly 55 years earlier, and to hear Apollo 13 astronaut Col. Fred Haise (ret.). Among other telling remarks, Colonel Haise recalled how the Apollo program had reinvented itself from the ground up, after tragically losing the lives of the three Apollo 1 astronauts in a spaceship fire on the ground in 1967. It should be noted that their reinvention of themselves was so successful, that in all the subsequent space missions, not one single life was lost in space until the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster of 1986.
In their monograph on “The Apollo Tradition,” Robert Seamens and George Mueller, two top Apollo administrators, said that the program implemented after the Apollo 1 tragedy required that everyone in the program, about 30-40,000 people, was repeatedly required to reinvent themselves, as new, better, and more capable people, within an interdisciplinary team framework.
To say the same thing differently—they were able, at least for a period, to vanquish mediocrity. Mediocrity kills. Here the John Kennedy tradition, the Apollo tradition, finds its place within Lyndon LaRouche’s Four New Laws.
U.S. POLITICAL & ECONOMIC
After the Houston Flood, 1,000 Turn Out To Commemorate Kennedy Moon Address
HOUSTON, Sept. 14 (EIRNS)—Kesha Rogers, a leader in Houston, Texas, of the LaRouchePAC Policy Committee, authored the following report:
“We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard….”
—President John F. Kennedy, Sept. 12, 1962
Tuesday, September 12th, marked the 55th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s Rice Stadium “Moon Speech” in Houston, Texas. In celebration of that historic event which inspired so many, nearly 1,000 people piled into the Stude Concert Hall on the Rice University Campus. The event marking this historic date was titled, “Failure Is Not an Option: Embodying the Credo, ‘We Do This Not Because It Is Easy, But Because It Is Hard.’ ” The featured guest speaker was Apollo 13 astronaut Fred Haise. Ellen Ochoa, director of Johnson Space Center, also spoke during a brief moderated question-and-answer session along with Haise.
The President of Rice University David Leebron quoted in his opening remarks these very words uttered by President John F. Kennedy in his first lecture at Rice University on Sept. 12, 1962:
“We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a state noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.” Mr. Leebron explained that in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey that had devastated the Texas region—as now Irma has done to the Florida coast—those words of John F. Kennedy were just as relevant today as they were when first heard 55 years ago.
Eighty-four-year-old astronaut Fred Haise gave an awe-inspiring speech to the packed crowd, which had exceeded everyone’s expectations for attendance. He spoke about the history of the United States’ manned space program, and the harrowing story of the Apollo 13 mission of 1970. Colonel Haise was the Lunar Module pilot for Apollo 13. The mission of Apollo 13 had been to land in the Fra Mauro area of the Moon, but an explosion onboard the spacecraft forced the crew to instead circle the Moon without landing, and the Fra Mauro site was reassigned to Apollo 14. In speaking about his experience aboard Apollo 13, Haise recounted the tragic loss of life on Apollo 1 in 1967, after a fire broke out in the cockpit as the spacecraft was sitting on the launch pad, killing all three astronauts. The lessons learned from that tragic event, and the commitment made then that “failure is not an option,” saved the lives of Haise and his crewmates later, in 1970, as he explained. The sacrifice of those who had lost their lives before, may just have saved the lives of others after them.
I think that this is a notable lesson for today. Will we learn the lesson of Harvey? Will we build the infrastructure we need to ensure that not another life will be lost due to man-made error and negligence? So much has been lost, so many have sacrificed—how will we right the wrongs and make the new discoveries which will ensure a better future ahead?
I asked Colonel Haise about the lessons that might be learned from the space program and Apollo, that would help to guide the nation during this period of crisis in the aftermath of the hurricanes. He responded by emphasizing the importance of having the right leader, the necessity of teamwork for rebuilding and infrastructure, and the need to put fully adequate financial resources into that rebuilding—which can only come from a Federal mission, of the sort that Kennedy understood was needed to make Apollo a success. During the question-and-answer session, while Ochoa seemed to toe the line about NASA’s increasingly shifting to reliance on privatized space flight, Colonel Haise bluntly pointed out these private companies only exist because of NASA, and, unlike NASA, if they don’t make a profit, they cease to have a mission.
Colonel Haise concluded by highlighting the unique quality of human beings to make discoveries, unlike any animal. No pig or dolphin can build a spacecraft, he said, but you can. His speech was given a standing ovation, and the audience left the room greatly inspired, with great hope for the future.
The Irony of the U.S. History of Political Interference In Other Countries’ Affairs
Sept. 14 (EIRNS)—In a Sept. 13 article posted on ConsortiumNewsonline publication, journalist and editor Robert Parry makes a valuable contribution to exposing the Anglophile “regime change” apparatus in the U.S. which ran the neo-Nazi coup in Ukraine, aimed at eventually overthrowing President Vladimir Putin in Russia.
Parry reports that Carl Gershman, head of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), headquarters for multiple U.S. government-funded regime-change operations around the world, was at the center of the Ukraine coup. Parry writes: “Gershman, in effect, charted the course for the crisis in Ukraine and the greater neocon goal of regime change in Russia. In a [Sept. 26, 2013] Washington Post op-ed, Gershman called Ukraine ‘the biggest prize’ and explained how pulling it into the Western camp could contribute to the ultimate defeat of Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Parry calls the long history of the U.S. government interfering covertly or semi-covertly in the politics of countries all over the world “the ironic backdrop to the current frenzy over Russia-gate and Russia’s alleged dissemination of emails that undermined Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”
Parry also points to a fact well known to readers of EIR. He shows (using documents acquired from the Reagan Presidential Library through a mandatory declassification review), that Walter Raymond, a corrupt member of Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council, was instrumental in recreating the CIA’s “political action” programs—programs that had been exposed by the Watergate intelligence scandals of the 1970s—by farming them out to private NGOs such as Freedom House and by the founding of the NED in 1983. The NED, on a $100 million annual budget funded in part by the U.S. State Department, runs “democracy promotion” programs in countries all over the world. In reality, these programs are intended to influence the internal policies of other nations the same way that the more covert CIA “political action” programs of the 1950s through the 1970s were—to include, whenever it’s deemed necessary, regime change.
NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
International Competition To Launch the Italy-Tunisia Bridge, or TUNeIT Platform
Sept. 14 (EIRNS)—The Schiller Institute is among the sponsors of an initiative to launch the idea of a bridge between Tunisia and Italy, called TUNeIT, which will be presented in Tunis on Sept. 19. It is an international competition for students and experts on the “Creation of an artificial island in El Houaria, the Northern Coast of Tunisia.” The artificial island would be the first leg of the TUNeIT project, which was presented by its author, Enzo Siviero, at the October 2014 European Schiller Institute conference in Frankfurt, Germany.
TUNeIT is a proposal for an infrastructure project, bridging the 140 km ocean strait between Italy (Sicily) and Tunisia, by repeating, multiple times, the Messina Bridge project, to create a stable crossing of the Strait of Sicily. In order to support the bridges, it is necessary to create artificial islands, built with the recovery of materials from excavation. These islands would provide all the services necessary for the operation of the infrastructure.
The Italian Ministry for Economic Development, the Rome University La Sapienza, the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Ingégnieurs de Tunis, and the Engineering Associations of Mediterranean Countries are among the many other sponsors.
Among the speakers, Siviero will present the TUNeIT project, while Shehu Mustapha from the World Federation of Engineering Organizations will speak about Africa and Great Projects. Tunisia’s Ministry of Higher Education will give a closing address.
Syria Moving Quickly on Reconstruction
Sept. 14 (EIRNS)-Not only is the Syrian military campaign moving quickly to drive what’s left of ISIS out of Syria, but behind it, the Syrian government, with the help of Russia and Iran, is moving just as quickly on reconstruction.
RT reported yesterday that Russia is preparing to send more than 4,000 tons of materials and over 40 pieces of construction equipment to Syria to help the war-torn country in its multibillion-dollar reconstruction effort. The equipment includes bulldozers, excavators and cranes, while the materials consist of “over 2,000 tons of metal pipes” that would be used to restore water infrastructure as well as “hundreds of kilometers of high-voltage and fiber-optic cables” to restore electricity and communications lines.
The construction material will be used to restore “critical infrastructure” to those areas that have recently been freed from terrorist fighters, the Russian Defense Ministry said, stressing that hospitals and schools remain the priority. RT notes that the announcement of this shipment followed Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s meeting with Syrian President Bashar al Assad in Damascus on Sept. 12.
Syrian Electricity Minister Zuhair Kharboutli was in Tehran this week, where he signed contracts with the Iranian state-run Mabna company for the purchase of roughly 790 megawatts worth of power generators, to be installed at three different locations in Syria, including at the Aleppo thermal electric power plant, reports SANA.
In addition, the Al-Sha’er gas fields in the northeastern countryside of Homs province, liberated from ISIS earlier this year, have begun pumping gas into the Syrian economy once again. A government source told Al Masdar News that the Al-Sha’er gas fields are now pumping “up to 1 million meters squared of fuel a day, thus ending the fuel crisis that was plaguing Syria for years.”
U.S. Africa Command Head: U.S. and China ‘Have Shared Interests in African Stability’
Sept. 14 (EIRNS)—In his prepared remarks for the Sept. 13 seminar at the Washington-based United States Institute for Peace Program (USIP) on “U.S.-African Partnerships: Advancing Common Interests,” Gen. Thomas Waldhauser (USMC), the commander of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), said that, “Across the continent, we have shared interests in African stability. We see many areas where we can cooperate with the Chinese military. For example, we both support UN peacekeeping missions and training with African defense forces. The fact that we have mutual interests in Africa means that we can and should cooperate,” he said, in the transcript published in by the aggregator AllAfrica yesterday.
He also said that “China has completed significant and much-needed infrastructure projects as a part of its ‘One Belt, One Road’ strategy—which it likens to a modern day Silk Road connecting markets worldwide. … This investment has the capacity to transform the African continent, improving households, livelihoods, and macro-economies. Better ports, better roads, better railways, better power grids—these are all desperately needed.
“The Chinese also recently completed construction of their first overseas military base, located a few kilometers from U.S. facilities in Djibouti. And as you would expect, this presents unique challenges and opportunities found nowhere else in the world.”
European and Chinese Media Assure China’s Investments Are Benefit, Not Threat
Sept. 14 (EIRNS)—In a New Silk Road Forum on Sept. 10, in the context of the Thessaloniki International Fair, of 25 European and Chinese press agencies organized by Athens-Macedonian News Agency (AMNA), Greece’s national news agency, all hailed the Chinese Belt and Road policy and Chinese investments. Responding to a recent article in the New York Times worrying over Chinese investment in Greece, Michalis Psylos, the president of AMNA, told Xinhua that “nobody cares about the report.” The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative “gives Greece the room and potential to upgrade its own role in the modern world as a member of the European Union,” said Psylos in his opening remarks.
“We think the relationship between China and Greece is of strategic and geopolitical importance, and the news agencies in both countries wish to continue the promotion of the cooperation, for it is mutually beneficial for the two countries and the two peoples,” he told Xinhua.
Miguel Sanchez, Spain’s EFE agency’s economic and financial editor, likewise said that “we are very happy to see in these days the growing number of Chinese companies in Spain … because Chinese companies are offering more and more high-quality products.” As for competition between Chinese and local companies, he said that Spain should be creative about it, “because it is a way to improve local business.”
Nenad Babic, executive officer of Serbia’s Tanjug news agency said, “The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by the Chinese government has given us a chance to strengthen our relationship in more than just a political way. Concrete projects with Chinese investment obviously facilitate that process.
“China invested in Serbia’s biggest iron producer under the framework of Belt and Road initiative. The construction of the railway connecting Serbia and Hungary will be done also with the financial help of Chinese banks. The railway will connect south Europe with the Piraeus port in Greece, which will facilitate big trade in the whole region,” he told Xinhua.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Yemeni Foreign Minister Receives LaRouche Movement Declaration To Stop Saudi Aggression in Yemen
Sept. 14 (EIRNS)—On Wednesday, Sept. 13, the Foreign Minister of Yemen, Engineer Hisam Sharaf, received in his office in Sana’a the statement of the LaRouche Movement titled “Enemy of Silk Road Paradigm: Saudi Genocide in Yemen,” delivered by Schiller Institute friend Fouad Al-Ghaffari, Chairman of the Yemeni Advisory Office for Coordination with the BRICS, and also the president of the Yemeni Youth Cabinet.
The Yemeni daily Sana’a News (http://www.sanaanews.net/news-55193.htm) covered the meeting under the headline, “The Foreign Minister Receives the Statement of the LaRouche Movement Concerning Yemen and Calling for Stopping the Aggression,” reporting that Al-Ghaffari briefed the minister on the latest international developments concerning Yemen, especially since the Xiamen BRICS Summit, which referenced the situation in Yemen for the first time in its final declaration.
According to Sana’a News, Al-Ghaffari “briefed the Foreign Minister on the vision adopted by Mrs. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who is also known as the New Silk Road Lady, calling for an immediate end to the Saudi aggression on Yemen, and who calls for including Yemen in the New Silk Road initiative.” Sana’a News reports that the LaRouche Movement statement calls for establishing an international commission to investigate the crimes committed by the Saudi regime, which is known for its aggressive character since its creation, and which is now targeting the program of President Trump.
Al-Ghaffari also briefed the Minister on the efforts being made in the U.S. Congress to stop the sales of arms and ammunition to Saudi Arabia, and that activists in Washington are pushing Congress to end support for the Saudi war that has claimed the lives of at least 10,000 Yemeni civilians and has blocked delivery of food and medicines to millions, causing the country’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.
Sana’a News also reported that the members of the LaRouche Movement are planning to distribute their statement at the UN General Assembly in New York, as well as at the conference of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. It further adds that the statement stresses that the aggression against Yemen is part of the regime-change policies pursued by the U.S. and Britain for decades, and that this barbarism can only be outflanked by the rallying around the New Silk Road paradigm.
In concluding its report, Sana’a News states that, “It is noteworthy that His Excellency Eng. Hisham Sharaf had expressed in a letter to his Chinese counterpart in April, the desire for Yemen to join the New Silk Road. The Xiamen Declaration of the BRICS nations has now opened a very important window for Yemen that can be utilized to send a message to the Foreign Ministers of the BRICS, who are intending to meet on the sidelines of the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly, and to bring the situation in Yemen to the UN Security Council.”
Russian and U.S. Delegations Meet on Sidelines of Astana Syrian Negotiation
Sept. 14 (EIRNS)—The delegations from Russia and United States met on the sidelines of the Syria talks now being held in Astana, Kazakhstan, according to TASS today. A source told TASS that the Russian delegation had already met with United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura. No details of the meetings were released.
The Russian delegation is led by Special Presidential Representative for resolving the Syrian crisis Alexander Lavrentyev, while the U.S. delegation is headed by Acting Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield, the highest-level delegate the U.S. has sent to these talks so far.
Sputnik reports that the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), Egypt, Iraq, and China may become observers of the Astana process at the next meeting in October. The guarantors of the process have been Russia, Iran, and Turkey. The United States and Jordan already have observer status. “We are discussing the extension of the observer states. There are requests coming from various states. The process of Syria’s restoration needs to be launched, countries need to invest money into it…. There are proposals to include the U.A.E., Egypt, Iraq and China,” the source said.
Alexander Lavrentyev told reporters that an agreement on the creation of the fourth and last Syrian safe zone in the Idlib province was very close to fulfillment. “We are very close to the signing of an agreement on the establishment of all four de-escalation zones, but I won’t assess this event so far,” he said. Russia, Iran and Turkey, the three guarantors of the Astana process over Syria, will be involved in control of the de-escalation zone in Idlib, said Lavrentyev. “Participation of monitors from all three guarantor states—Russia, Turkey and Iran is envisaged.”
SCIENCE & INFRASTRUCTURE
Hidden Figures Author: Their Work Was ‘As Elegant as Poetry, as Beautiful as a Symphony’
WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 14 (EIRNS)—Last evening, the author of the book, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, Margot Lee Shetterly, received the National Academy of Sciences 2017 Communication award in the books category at the Academy’s headquarters here.
The Academy award states: “A hitherto little-known episode in the history of pioneering aerospace engineering and computing was brought to light so engagingly that, along with the blockbuster movie it inspired, it has had an unprecedented impact on the American public.”
In brief remarks upon receiving the award, Shetterly recognized the importance of her parents—a NASA scientist and an educator—who were in the audience, in her decision to pursue the research that led to the book. She said she is continuing her research, to uncover more of the “hidden figures” whose contributions have not yet been recognized.
She ended her remarks by noting her admiration for the women who made history, and saying that the work they did in the space program was “as elegant as poetry and as beautiful as a symphony.”
Japan’s Atomic Energy Commission Insists To Keep Nuclear Power as ‘Key of Energy Supply’
Sept. 14 (EIRNS)—Japan’s nuclear policy-setting Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), in its 322-page “nuclear white paper” released today, concluded that nuclear power should “remain a key component of the country’s energy supply despite broad public support for a less nuclear-reliant society,” Associated Press reported. This is the first such report prepared by the agency since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor accident, caused by a deadly tsunami that followed the March 11, 2011 major earthquake.
Subsequently, Japan shut down all 54 reactors (including the six reactors in Fukushima crippled by the accident). Prior to the shutdown, about 30% of Japan’s power was supplied by these reactors. Today, there are just 4 reactors in operation across Japan.
In its report, wrote AP, the AEC said that nuclear power must “account for at least 20% of Japan’s energy supply in 2030.” It said rising utility costs caused by expensive fossil fuel imports and slow reactor restarts have affected Japan’s economy. “The government should make clear the long-term benefit of nuclear power generation and consider measures that need to be taken,” AP quoted the report as saying.
