EDITORIAL
Bannon Aims for Economic Warfare on China; LaRouche Aims for West To Join the ‘New Silk Road Spirit’
Oct. 1 (EIRNS)—Steve Bannon, the recently departed White House aide to President Trump, is frantically mobilizing support for his plan to drive the United States into a geopolitical, imperial, economic war against China—i.e., to sabotage Trump’s stated intention to work closely with China in rebuilding the crumbling U.S. infrastructure, and potentially bringing the U.S. into the New Silk Road process of building infrastructure around the world. A September 28 interview with Bloomberg’s Businessweek spells out his intentions, in a piece titled: “Bannon’s Back and Targeting China,” with the kicker: “From Birmingham to Beijing, the former Trump strategist is leading a movement of his own, now warning of the forced technology transfer of American innovation to China—and working with Henry Kissinger.”
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, speaking by video to the Saturday LaRouche PAC Manhattan Project Town Hall meeting in New York City on September 30, identified the danger this Bannon operation represents. She pointed to the Obama/Hillary networks and their neocon fellows on the Republican side, who are committed to stopping Trump’s effort to work closely with Russia and China, now joined by “the Bannon factor trying to work on Trump, to try to pit him against China. I think this is strategic, and we absolutely have to counter that because the knowledge or the perception about what China is actually doing in the West is absolutely wrong.”
The reality that China is taking huge leaps in nearly every area of science, technology and industry is no longer questioned in the British and Wall Street circles. But rather than looking at the fantastic transformation of the Chinese economy as an opportunity for cooperation in restoring growth to the Western economies and the world as a whole, they describe it as an existential threat to their unipolar power, and to their capacity to prop up their bankrupt financial system through further austerity and looting of the real economy here and around the world.
Nowhere is this more clear than in Puerto Rico. The lying mainstream press is run screaming headlines that Trump is ignoring the people of Puerto Rico, despite the massive ongoing military and civilian mobilization to restore the devastated island and its people—a mobilization duly praised by the Governor of Puerto Rico and by their representative to the U.S. Congress. The truth of the intentional destruction of that suffering island by the Obama Administration and his Wall Street sponsors is no longer being suppressed. It was Obama who signed the bill last year giving a hand-picked panel the power to take over Puerto Rico’s finances from their elected government, imposing deadly austerity on their hospitals, the electrical grid and more, leaving them literally helpless in the face of the hurricane—all to put the demands of debt (most of it illegitimate) ahead of the needs of the people. President Trump’s reference to the debt crisis in Puerto Rico which existed long before the hurricane, reflects his increasing recognition over the past week that the private sector has done nothing, and will do nothing, to address either the current crisis or the underlying causes.
Trump decided last week that the initial cleanup in Puerto Rico will be 100% covered by the government, and then, the next day, announced that his $1 trillion infrastructure plan would no longer involve private sector involvement—the so-called PPP model—but would be 100% financed by national and local government. Of course, this begs the question of where the national and local governments will get the funds—a question that can only be answered by the LaRouche Four Laws approach, to restore the Hamiltonian credit system, to replace the now bankrupt British monetary system which has increasingly taken over both the U.S. and Europe over the past 50 years.
Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche, in her Saturday remarks, addressed this crisis of civilization from the positive perspective which has driven the policies of her and her husband Lyndon LaRouche over this past half-century, what she called “the New Silk Road spirit.” “And the Silk Road spirit is powerful!” she said. “It is something which I think can be injected in every other country.”
She referenced the difficult time when LaRouche and several of his associates were imprisoned by the Bush family—a witchhunt implemented by the same Robert Mueller and his corrupt cohorts who are now running a coup attempt against President Trump—adding: “What kept me going all the time, was that I knew that what we are doing is a policy based on the physical laws of the Universe; that what we are doing in promoting scientific and technological progress, of having an image of Man which is in cohesion with the creative forces of the Universe; that therefore, what we say is within natural law, and our opponents are working against natural law, and therefore they cannot succeed.
“So you have to somehow develop a perspective which is not bound and not affected by your daily environment and your daily experience, but you have to inform your vision about something else: you have to have an idea where mankind should be in 100 years from now. You should have an idea of what are the physical laws of this Universe, and why our opponents are just poor, opinionated idiots who cannot succeed.
“I think if you take an international aspect as your reference point, you will be much better in a position to be an American patriot, because you are a world citizen first, and therefore you are affected by oppressive environments, and that is how I have been doing it—and that works, I can assure you.”
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Tillerson: U.S. Is Talking Directly to North Korea
Sept. 30 (EIRNS)—During a press briefing in Beijing, following meetings with Chinese officials, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson indicated that the U.S. government has two or three direct lines to Pyongyang. “We are probing, so stay tuned,” Tillerson said. “We can talk to them, we do talk to them directly, through our own channels,” saying that the U.S. has “a couple, three channels open to Pyongyang.” According to Bloomberg News, the U.S. is testing Pyongyang’s appetite for negotiations.
One of the channels that Tillerson was referring to may have been the back-channel that U.S. Special Envoy Joseph Yun is conducting through the North Korean embassy at the United Nations in New York. Another could be what is called “Track 1.5,” made up of former U.S. officials on the one side and North Korea diplomats on the other. UPI, citing Japan’s Asahi Shimbun as its source, reported on Sept. 28, that there would soon be a Track 1.5 meeting and that the former U.S. officials participating could include Robert Gallucci, a diplomatic troubleshooter during the Clinton Administration; Leon Sigal, a North Korea specialist; and former U.S. special envoy for North Korea Joseph DeTrani.
‘Bannon’s Back and Targeting China’— Businessweek on His Escalating Economic War on Beijing
Oct. 1 (EIRNS)—In a cover story on Steve Bannon in Bloomberg Businessweek on Sept. 28, Bannon has escalated his stated intention of driving President Trump into an economic war with China, to ensure that the U.S. does not save itself by joining the New Silk Road.
The article is titled “Bannon’s Back and Targeting China—From Birmingham to Beijing,” They report that Bannon has been “preparing a project to sound an alarm about what he views as the primary economic threat to America: China.” They quote Bannon: “If we don’t get our situation sorted with China, we’ll be destroyed economically. The forced technology transfer of American innovation to China is the single biggest economic and business issue of our time. Until we sort that out, they will continue to appropriate our innovation to their own system and leave us as a colony—your Jamestown to their Great Britain, a tributary state.”
Bannon told Businessweek that he made up his mind to quit the Trump Administration after a pair of September meetings at Hendy Kissinger’s country home in Connecticut. Kissinger, Bannon told the magazine, said that during the Vietnam War, analysts outside the administration revived the Committee on the Present Danger because they were afraid that the U.S. was losing the Cold War with Russia. “They understood that you couldn’t do it from inside,” Bannon said. “You had to go outside and, like a fire bell in the night, wake up the American people.”
Bannon also pointed to his work with Andrew Marshall, director of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment for 42 years (who did his best to start a war with China in each of those years).
Businessweek notes that Bannon is planning to start a global conference series. “We are in advance discussions about having Breitbart sponsor a major security conference in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Persian Gulf, central Europe, and East Asia, in early to mid-2018,” he said.
Roger Stone Releases Testimony to House Intelligence Committee
Sept. 29 (EIRNS)—Armed with the knowledge that the House Intelligence Committee had decided before its Sept. 26 hearing on “Russiagate” not to produce a transcript of his testimony, and thereby pave the way for his statements to be taken out of context, battle-tested political consultant Roger Stone released his Opening Statement publicly, before the hearing, and made it available through a press conference and on multiple social media platforms. Stone, a close advisor to Donald Trump and a supporter of Lyndon LaRouche, has been targetted in the Robert Mueller “Russiagate” operation.
Stone attacked the Committee’s decision to hold a private hearing as one motivated by “cowardice,” and noted that the Democratic leaders of the Committee are “full of Schiff,” referring to the Committee’s Ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff.
He repeatedly identified “Russiagate” as a “witch-hunt,” saying, “I don’t believe there is any evidence that the DNC was hacked [by the Russians]…. No member of this Committee or intelligence agency can prove this assertion.”
He then reported the findings of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) report, which proved there was no “Russian hacking,” and which he said had not been refuted, but instead “it has been covered up.” He urged the Committee members to study it.
Stone also chided the Committee for not allowing a full investigation of MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s phony dossier, and the role of Fusion GPS in the attacks against the Trump campaign, and the role of British intelligence in targeting Trump.
He commented on the intelligence establishment: “I realize they are deeply unhappy over President Trump’s refusal to expand the proxy war in Syria, and their failure to obtain the ‘no-fly’ zone promised to them by Hillary Clinton, which would have been an open invitation to World War III.”
“Mantra-like repetition of the claim by our vaunted ‘17 agencies’ that the ‘Russians’ colluded with the Trump campaign about Russia’s efforts to sway the election does not make it so.”
Further on this theme: “Trump has the potential to be a great and transformative President…. All of this is an effort to destabilize and delegitimize his Presidency. But they are empty-handed,; they have nothing.”
Stone noted that some members of the Committee had a reaction to this statement in the hearing: “Based on what we know now, it is clear that there was a foreign nation which was colluding with a presidential campaign in an attempt to influence the outcome of the election. Therefore, I strongly urge this commitee to investigate the numerous publicly documented contacts between Ukraine and the Clinton campaign.”
This was part of his defense of his former business partner, Paul Manafort, who he said has been fully forthcoming, as he has nothing to hide. He attacked the treatment given by Mueller to Manafort, characterizing the FBI pre-dawn raid of his home, and the threats that he will be indicted as a “classic prosecutor’s trick … trying to find something.”
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Tensions Mount Between Iraqi Kurds and Baghdad—War Possible
Oct. 1 (EIRNS)—In Iraq, tensions between the Kurds and just about everyone else are climbing in the aftermath of the Kurdish referendum on Sept. 25. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, on Sept. 30, was talking about Baghdad’s taking control of the revenues from oil sales in northern Iraq.
From Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, Kurdish authorities are defiantly vowing to refuse Iraqi officals access to the airports. How much that’s worth now that Baghdad, Tehran, and Ankara are preventing international flights from landing at Erbil, is open to conjecture. The Kurdistan Regional Minister of Transportation Mawlood Bawa Murad said there should not be any doubt that the Kurdish government has the exclusive right whether or not to approve a visit by Iraqi officials to the airport aimed at supervising or monitoring the air operations. “We will not allow even one single person from Iraq, from the Iraqi civil aviation, or from the office of the [Iraqi] Council of Ministers to come to the Erbil and Sulaimnai international airports without our decision,” Bawa Murad said.
And the Kurdish parliament has voted to reject the authority of the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad, as well as giving the peshmerga, the K.R.G. military, authority to “protect areas coming under threats,” that is, from the Iraqi army, namely the disputed or Kurdistan areas outside the Kurdistan Region, including Kirkuk, to which Baghdad said it was sending troops.
In Ankara, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of stirring the pot in Kurdistan. In a televised speech, Erdogan said Turkey had been saddened to see some Iraqi Kurds acclaiming the referendum outcome with Israeli flags. “This shows one thing, that this administration (in northern Iraq) has a history with Mossad. They are hand-in-hand together,” Erdogan said.
UN in Dubious Investigation of War Crimes in Yemen
Sept. 30 (EIRNS)—While an investigation of “human rights violations” in the war in Yemen was adopted by the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva today, the Saudi monarchy apparently avoided a real investigation of its war crimes there.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche on Sept. 14 called for a full international investigation of war crimes in Yemen and a complete halt to Saudi bombing and blockade, to U.S. and U.K. arming of the Saudis’ aggressive war, and to negotiations among Yemeni parties.
Following the Dutch proposal of a full-scale war crimes investigation, today’s resolution was a “compromise” drafted by the United States, Britain and France which created a “panel of experts” as opposed to a commission of inquiry. This was welcomed by Saudi UN Ambassador Abdulaziz because it amounted to protection from a full-scale investigation into the situation of Saudi aggressive war, bombing of economic and healthcare facilities, deliberate bombing of civilian gatherings, embargo of the population, and other crimes.
The Saudis said “the combination of international and national mechanisms is an excellent result for the promotion and protection of human rights.” But according to EIR’s Hussein Askary, thoroughly familiar with the desperate situation in Yemen, this means, in effect, a fake investigation because carried out in the first place under control of the long since illegitimate Hadi government itself, Saudi Arabia’s client—the “national mechanism.”
Nonetheless the Dutch Ambassador Rochus Pronk dubiously called this a “fully-fledged international investigation” and “an incredible outcome.” The U.K.—number two in supplying arms and targeting intelligence to the Saudi war of aggression—also praised it, saying incredibly “nation-states should be allowed to carry out their own inquiries where countries are carrying out credible investigations into international humanitarian law.” The Hadi “government” is no nation-state, but a puppet of the Saudi “coalition.”
The event puts more focus on a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives which calls for the United States to stop arming or supporting the Saudis’ genocidal war on Yemen. House Concurrent Resolution 81 was submitted Sept. 26 by Democrats Ro Khanna of California and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, and Republicans Walter Jones of North Carolina and Thomas Massie of Kentucky. It has yet to be debated.
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Intense U.S. Debate on Infrastructure vs. Wall Street ‘Natural’ Disasters
Sept. 29 (EIRNS)—On August 31 the LaRouche Political Action Committee said in a national mobilization statement on “ ‘Natural’ Disasters Made on Wall Street,” that America needed “action, and action now” to build the new infrastructure which could have prevented those disasters.
Three major American metropolitan areas—New Orleans, New York, and Houston—had been devastated in little over a decade by the lack of protective infrastructure engineered decades earlier, but never built or even begun, due to Wall Street’s increasing control of U.S. economic policy for the past half-century. Since that mobilization was launched, new “natural” disasters have struck, far the worst in Puerto Rico, whose entire power and transport infrastructure has been destroyed completely.
The first beginnings of a paradigm shift have been provoked. In the White House, sources say that an intense discussion is taking place of the “trillion-dollar infrastructure-building program” now stalled for nine long months on the Trump agenda. President Trump himself said today on Twitter, “The fact is that Puerto Rico has been destroyed by two hurricanes. Big decisions will have to be made as to the cost of its rebuilding.”
The President “swung strongly away last week from the model of public-private partnerships (PPPs) to build projects,” one source said. And a Democratic Congressman reported President Trump committing in a meeting to public funding of the entire program, although undecided on how this would be funded.
“Action, and action now” on new infrastructure projects, for both productivity and protection, has entered the minds of elected officials, as EIR representatives found even in offices of Congress during this week. Mentioning the very subject was able to start unscheduled and sometimes lengthy meetings with senior Congressional staff and/or members. As intense as the focus often appeared, an idea of really creating—thus, financing—this new infrastructure and technology was utterly lacking.
Here is where the link to the China-launched Belt and Road Initiative, which “is building major new infrastructure projects across four continents,” was proposed as critical by EIR representatives. This link is the clear solution, but means that a United States national credit institution, lacking for 60 years, is as vital as a national capital budget, not used for 45.
What EIR proposed was specifically a Hamiltonian national bank for infrastructure and manufacturing, by which $1-2 trillion in outstanding Treasury debt would be exchanged for longer-term equity in the bank, and similarly large volumes of credit issued as currency by the bank for the productive, and pressing, high-technology new infrastructure. Such Treasury debt for national bank equity could immediately involve large foreign holders as well—China and Japan and South Korea—as can easily be confirmed. This helps open the American door to the New Silk Road, and to great projects both here, and bridging to Mexico/South America and to Canada/Alaska/Eurasia. Finally, to joint reconstruction of Mideast nations destroyed in Bush and Obama’s wars.
The idea, combined with Glass-Steagall reinstatement and space and fusion science-drivers, had been presented time and again in many Congressional offices but seemed, this week, to be “heard” for the first time, and as something new and surprising. “Who’s against this?” was a frequent question. “Wall Street and London” was the answer.
Former Chancellor Schröder Advocates Lifting Sanctions on Russia
Sept. 30 (EIRNS)—Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was elected chairman of the board of directors of Rosneft, the Russian oil and gas company yesterday. On the occasion he said he believes anti-Russian sanctions should be lifted and that a new German government would support the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
“I think that the [German] Federal government still supports the Nord Stream 2 project due to its own well-calculated interests. I think that the new government will demonstrate that Germany is interested in implementation of the Nord Stream 2,” he said.
On the sanctions, Schröder said, “The sanctions in the oil and gas sector are exacerbated not by the European Union, but by the United States of America.
“Regarding the sanctions imposed by the European Union, we should speak about their relief instead of exacerbation, if there is any progress in Donbass, and it has indeed been reached.”
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
Russian and North Korean Diplomats in Moscow Talks for Four Hours
Sept. 30 (EIRNS) —Following four hours of talks between Russian and North Korean diplomats in Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Russia was ready for joint efforts with Pyongyang to settle the situation on the Korean Peninsula by political and diplomatic means
Choe Son Hui, director of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s North America department, met with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov and Ambassador At Large Oleg Burmistrov.
“The Russian side reiterated its readiness for joint efforts in the interests of settling existing problems of the sub-region by peaceful political and diplomatic means, including in the context of promoting the Russian-Chinese roadmap for the Korean settlement,” the ministry said, reported TASS.
U.S. Welcomes Russian-North Korean Contacts To Help Persuade Pyongyang
Sept. 29 (EIRNS)—Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova announced that Russia’s special envoy for dealing with the Korea crisis, Oleg Burmistrov, will consult with the head of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s U.S. relations department Cho Song-hu in Moscow on Friday. “There will be an exchange of opinion regarding the situation on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia,” Zakharova said, as TASS reported.
U.S. Department of State spokesperson Heather Nauert responded that the United States would welcome such a move. “I can’t see that as a bad thing. Diplomacy is our preferred approach. If Russia can be successful in getting North Korea to move in a better direction, we would certainly welcome that.” She also mentioned that U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy Joseph Yun had visited Moscow about two weeks ago.
SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Energy Secretary Perry Takes a Step To Save America’s Nuclear Plants
Oct. 1 (EIRNS)—Energy Secretary Rick Perry is intervening in the life-threatening shut-down of U.S. nuclear plants by urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to “take swift action to address threats to U.S. electrical grid resiliency,” according to a Sept. 29 Department of Energy statement. The premature shutdowns of nuclear and coal plants threatens grid reliability, the DOE says, and are the result of flawed market rules.
FERC has historically, and sometimes single-handedly, created many of the deregulation rules and regulations, promoting this now-proven destructive “free-market” take-down of reliable energy. Perry has the authority to “urge” the Commission to issue a rule “requiring its organized markets to develop and implement reforms that would fully price generation resources necessary to maintain the reliability and resiliency of our nation’s grid.” Perry specifies the importance of resources with “on-site reserves,” which are coal and nuclear.
Federal action could not come soon enough, as more plants are on the chopping block.
OTHER
Catalan ‘Independence’ Referendum Fizzles… For Now
Oct. 1 (EIRNS)—London’s latest scripted color revolution, today’s “independence referendum” in the Spanish region of Catalonia, ended up being little more than a glorified photo-op for the Western liberal media to decry police “violence” and “repression” against so-called defenders of “democracy” and “freedom.” The separatist Catalan authorities are claiming that some 460 demonstrators were wounded; official Madrid figures state that 11 were injured.
Despite British hoopla that the Catalans were voting to defend their right to “freedom” and “democracy,” the actual content of the referendum was straight-out, unconstitutional separatism: “Do you want Catalonia to become an independent state in the form of a republic?” No matter it’s other weaknesses and its indefensible economic policy, Mariano Rajoy’s government was absolutely correct to denounce the referendum itself as sedition which could not be permitted by the government. National police forces were deployed to close polling stations, seize ballot boxes, and electronically deny access to the region’s verified electoral lists.
London’s color revolution gang improvised along the way. They relied on privately printed ballots; they allowed Catalans to vote at any polling station without using envelopes and whether registered there or not; and with hand-waving explained that this was all an exercise in democracy: “Later on we will explain how the votes will be counted,” the Catalonian government spokesman Jordi Turul stated.
The size of the turnout, like the number actually injured, is difficult to ascertain. Some media accounts report “tens of thousands” trying to vote, out of a total Catalan electorate of 5.3 million.
But London’s objective was never to produce an actual separatist victory as such in this round, but rather to launch the live phase of chaos and national dissolution across the country—and across Europe—precisely at the point that Rajoy’s government is seriously moving towards linking up with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. As an article in the Sept. 30 Guardian (U.K.) put it: “Catalans are not alone. Across the world, people yearn to govern themselves…. The puzzle is not why there are so many nation-states, but why there are so few. After all, there are something like (it’s guessing) 6,000 to 8,000 identifiable ethno-linguistic populations around the planet.”
