EDITORIAL
Time To Bury Mueller’s Attempted Coup, So the U.S. Can Get On Board the New Silk Road
Dec. 5 (EIRNS)—The attempted coup d’état against the Trump Presidency that is being orchestrated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, all according to a script provided by British intelligence, is taking on water right and left, and is now in serious danger of sinking altogether. As more and more evidence comes to light around the central role played by top FBI agent and Mueller sidekick Peter Strzok, and of related activity of the Get Trump taskforce which clearly crossed the line from the merely filthy and duplicitous to outright crimes against the Constitution, Mueller et al. surely realize that if they don’t succeed, they will soon end up in jail themselves.
Calls for ending the anti-Trump witch-hunt are growing throughout the media, including a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal signed by their Editorial Board, which insists that “The public has a right to know whether the [British intelligence] Steele dossier inspired the Comey probe, and whether it led to intrusive government eavesdropping.” The Journal editors write that they doubt “Mr. Mueller’s ability to conduct a fair and credible probe of the FBI’s considerable part in the Russia-Trump drama.”
But it is not sufficient to merely stall Mueller’s efforts, or even to damage them seriously. They must be buried. To that end, EIR has announced that the second printing of its special report, “Robert Mueller Is an Amoral Legal Assassin: He Will Do His Job If You Let Him,” will be released shortly.
The reason this is imperative, is to create the conditions in which the United States can join with China, Russia and other nations in constructing the New Silk Road for the benefit of all humanity. As Helga Zepp-LaRouche put it in remarks with associates today: “Countries which do not cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative are going to be sidelined to the detriment of their own populations.”
Zepp-LaRouche explained that there are tectonic shifts underway globally, with the collapse of the old trans-Atlantic financial system of speculation, and the rapid rise of the new system, of the Belt and Road Initiative.
“There is an unbelievable dynamic going on,” she reported. “There are conferences every day, where more countries, more forces, more businesses and industries are joining with this New Paradigm. The recent statement by Japanese Prime Minister Abe that Japan will cooperate with the Belt and Road is really important. Countries which do not cooperate are going to be sidelined, to the detriment of their own populations.
“This Chinese policy is not against any nation, nor is it somehow a conflict between the U.S. and other countries. This is the question of joining the future, joining an absolutely fantastic perspective. Former Romanian astronaut Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu just stated that, ‘After the Belt and Road Initiative, I think China has a Galactic Initiative in mind.’ That is absolutely in the spirit of the times.
“Our campaign is focused on Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Laws, on LaRouche’s economics, on the U.S. joining the New Silk Road, on U.S. space cooperation with other countries. And I think this is a perfect moment to turn all of the U.S. into an optimistic campaign. This can become the absolutely decisive turning force for the whole U.S. Now is the time to defend the President, defeat the coup, defeat the British Empire, and go into a completely new and prosperous, beautiful future. I think this is a wonderful perspective.”
For his part, Lyndon LaRouche summed up the strategic situation and the tasks before us as follows: “More can be done. We have the means to do so. It’s there, in our hands. Assume it, and create what must be done. Go for it!”
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
Japan To Participate in China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative
Dec. 5 (EIRNS)—At a reception of the Dec. 4-5 Sino-Japanese Entrepreneurs and Former High-level Officials Dialogue in Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, stressing the need for open economic activity across Asia, gave his approval for Japan’s participation in China’s One Belt, One Road initiative. He said: “I believe Japan will be able to cooperate well with China, which has been putting forward its One Belt, One Road initiative” in a free and open Indo-Pacific region…. Meeting robust infrastructure demand in Asia through cooperation between Japan and China will contribute greatly to the prosperity of Asian people, in addition to the economic development of the two countries,” Kyodo News reported.
Abe’s willingness to participate in the Belt and Road was expected, following the appearance on Nov. 28 of an article in Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun that the Abe government is considering supporting Japanese companies to carry out joint projects with the Chinese companies along the China-formulated One Belt, One Road economic project, for “improving Japan-China relations and obtaining China’s cooperation in hindering North Korea’s nuclear and missile development.” The article had also said that this emerged following a meeting between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping during the July G20 summit in Germany. “During the meeting, Abe described the project as an ‘initiative with potential’ and expressed his willingness to cooperate,” the article wrote.
The third round of Sino-Japanese Entrepreneurs and Former High-Level Officials Dialogue, according to Xinhua, was attended by former Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan and former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda along with 70 business leaders.
China-Latin America-Caribbean Summit Unprecedented Success
Dec. 5 (EIRNS)—Organizers and participants of the Eleventh China-Latin America-Caribbean Business Summit, which concluded Dec. 2 in Punta del Este, Uruguay, agreed that the gathering was a resounding success, having attracted the largest participation—2,500 people—since these events first began in 2007. At every level of discussion, the focus was on cooperation with China, and with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), with the understanding that this represents the opportunity for future for real economic development. On Dec. 2, the final day of the conference, close to 1,000 business meetings took place, in which agreements were signed, projects discussed, exhibits presented, etc.
Speaking at the first plenary session Dec. 1, Chile’s former President Eduardo Frei, who is also President Michelle Bachelet’s Minister Plenipotentiary for Asia-Pacific affairs, said it very clearly. Given what he called the U.S. “isolationist” policy, he said that Latin American and Caribbean countries should join forces to take advantage of what China is offering.
“The Belt and Road is a policy which will allow us to build large infrastructure projects in the region,” he said. “It means credit, investments, complementarity [of Chinese companies] with our countries’ companies and opportunities to compete in global markets. This means development. This means the Belt and Road.”
Speaking on the same panel, Uruguay’s Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa offered statistics on how many Chinese and Asian citizens are expected to enter the middle class over the next 10 years, noting China’s success in lifting large numbers of its population out of poverty. Both Uruguay and Latin America, he said, possess the capability to provide food and other goods to this rapidly-expanding market.
Cai Dong, Executive Vice President of the China Development Bank (CDB), told Spain’s EFE news service that the CDB has 200 projects in 18 of the region’s countries underway, and thus it is playing a leading role “in the framework” of the Belt and Road.
SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Former Romanian Astronaut Remarks, ‘I Think China Has a Galactic Initiative in Mind’
Dec. 5 (EIRNS)—Former Romanian astronaut Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu commented that “After the Belt and Road Initiative, I think China has a Galactic Initiative in mind,” in a Dec. 3 interview with Xinhua in Bucharest. He had been in Beijing to attend the Human in Space Symposium which took place in Shenzhen, on Nov. 27-30. Prunariu has long been a proponent of space cooperation with China. When he was president of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), whose members are astronauts and cosmonauts, he told Xinhua, “I personally insisted on having Chinese astronauts as members … and also on holding ASE conferences in Beijing in 2014, to start getting to know each other better.”
He continued, “In 2022 China will have its own space station and it is currently encouraging the developing countries to take part in space programs for the benefit of mankind.” China was the first in history, he pointed out, to propose to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, an agreement for the office to select experiments from developing countries to be conducted on the Chinese space station without charge. “No other nation has ever signed such an agreement,” he said.
“Time has shown, that China is promoting space activities and is open to developing space projects as well as advanced science and technology,” said Prunariu.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
New Exposés Damage Mueller’s Brazen Coup d’État Attempt
Dec. 5 (EIRNS)—Ongoing revelations about the extensive, central role played in the British-concocted coup d’état against President Donald Trump by top FBI agent Peter Strzok, an avowed political opponent of Trump and a supporter of Hillary Clinton, has left Special Counsel Robert Mueller reeling—and trying to cover up for his crimes.
On Dec. 4, none other than CNN reported that “electronic records show” that the person who changed the characterization of Hillary Clinton’s actions from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless” in the FBI report on her e-mail shenanigans, was Peter Strzok. That re-write took Clinton off the hook, and changed a felony into merely being naughty and careless. Senate Judiciary Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), among others, has been demanding the metadata of the drafting process of that memo, “but the identity of who was behind the edit has not been reported until now,” CNN reported. They included: “CNN has also learned that Strzok was the FBI official who signed the document officially opening an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.”
Strzok is further pilloried in a Dec. 4 article by Sara Carter of Circa news agency, who is described as an award-winning national security correspondent who has broken a number of stories exposing the dirty operations against Trump. Carter’s article states that Strzok was one of two FBI agents who interviewed Gen. Michael Flynn at the White House on Jan. 24, where Flynn allegedly lied to the FBI. She cites several sources to this effect, and then quotes one former U.S. intelligence official who told her: “With the recent revelation that Strzok was removed from the Special Counsel investigation for making anti-Trump text messages, it seems likely that the accuracy and veracity of the 302 [FBI report] of Flynn’s interview as a whole should be reviewed and called into question. The most logical thing to happen would be to call the other FBI Special Agent present during Flynn’s interview before the Grand Jury to recount his version.”
Carter also reports on that infamous Flynn interview with the FBI. “According to another source, with direct knowledge of the Jan. 24 interview, [then-Acting FBI Director Andrew] McCabe had contacted Flynn by phone directly at the White House. White House officials had spent the ‘earlier part of the week with the FBI overseeing training and security measures associated with their new roles so, it was no surprise to Flynn that McCabe had called,’ the source said. McCabe told Flynn ‘some agents were heading over (to the White House) but Flynn thought it was part of the routine work the FBI had been doing and said they would be cleared at the gate,’ the source said. ‘It wasn’t until after they were already in (Flynn’s) office that he realized he was being formally interviewed. He didn’t have an attorney with him,’ they added.”
Whether any of this account is true, in whole or in part, remains to be determined; but the fact is that Mueller’s operation is getting slammed pretty much non-stop at this point.
Wall Street Journal: ‘Mueller’s Credibility Problem’
Dec. 5 (EIRNS)—The above headline on the lead editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal, signed by its Editorial Board, understates the uprising which has exploded, even into the media, against Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his FBI coup plotters in the wake of the Strzok revelations.
Joining the Strzok details with the fact that the Department of “Justice and the FBI have continued to defy legal subpoenas for documents pertaining to both surveillance warrants and the infamous Steele dossier,” the Journal editorial concludes: “All of this reinforces our doubts about Mr. Mueller’s ability to conduct a fair and credible probe of the FBI’s considerable part in the Russia-Trump drama. Mr. Mueller ran the bureau for 12 years and is fast friends with Mr. Comey, whose firing by Mr. Trump triggered his appointment as special counsel. The reluctance to cooperate with a congressional inquiry compounds doubts related to this clear conflict of interest.”
Investor’s Business Daily, too, editorialized somewhat more directly: “FBI, Mueller Investigation Of Trump Is Politicized; Shut It Down.” The news agency writes that “the team Mueller has put together looks less like a bunch of objective legal investigators and more like a gang of political hit-men,” although wrongly calling the hit-men “a group of rogue bureaucrats trying to get Trump impeached,” ignoring the glaring British hand directing the show. Its conclusion, however, is to the point: “Mueller should be fired, Comey reprimanded, and the investigation shut down.”
Conservative talkshow host Hugh Hewitt headlined his opinion column in the Washington Post, “A Special Counsel Needs To Investigate the FBI and Justice Department. Now.” Hewitt warned that the Strzok revelations could “shatter public confidence in a number of long-held assumptions about the criminal-justice system generally and the FBI and the Justice Department specifically.” If confidence in federal law enforcement is to be restored, Hewitt argued, “the Justice Department should appoint a special counsel to investigate Strzok’s actions as soon as possible.”
Radio talk show host Adriana Cohen added her voice to the fray, in her Boston Herald call, “Time Hack Robert Mueller Got Boot; Department of Injustice.” Although also wrongly treating the Mueller team as a “domestic” question and the FBI as merely “a weaponized arm of the Democratic Party,” Cohen insists that “the corruption within the FBI and Department of Justice has reached cosmic proportions. And because of it taxpayers must demand the politically driven Russian collusion probe be shuttered immediately…. The Russian investigations—costing taxpayers millions—have been a gross miscarriage of justice. Time to shut it all down.”
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
China Cracks Down on the Bitcoin Speculative Scam
Dec. 5 (EIRNS)—Deputy Governor Pan Gongsheng of China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, was quoted in a business daily Yicaiyesterday, that: “If we didn’t shut bitcoin exchanges and crack down on initial coin offerings a few months ago, and if more than 80% of the world’s bitcoin transactions and financing activities were still taking place in China, which was the case back in January, what would it be like today? It’s scary to think about,” according to RT. RT reported that China believes the bitcoin trade was being used as a vehicle for massive capital flight abroad.
The bitcoin operation is a total scam, a Ponzi scheme of a privatelycreated so-called “cryptocurrency,” whose value depends exclusively on the ability to sucker more and more people into “investing” in bitcoins. It can best be described as another Tulip Bubble—but this time without even any tulips.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Beijing Raises Concerns about Rising Tensions on Korean Peninsula
Dec. 5 (EIRNS)—China is so concerned about the rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula aggravated by the U.S.-South Korean Vigilant Ace air exercise that the Chinese PLA Air Force is running its own drills over the waters of the Yellow and East Seas. A Chinese military expert told Britain’s Daily Telegraph that the Chinese drills are “a defiant warning” to Washington and Seoul that it will uphold a “balance of power.” Chinese Air Force spokesman Shen Jinke announced China’s drills on social media on Dec. 4, saying that military aircraft “arrived in air lanes and regions that we have never been to before.” There were no details on when the drills took place, but Chen said the maneuvers involved “fighter jets, early warning aircraft and surface-to-air missile forces.”
The Chinese government also made clear China’s unease about the U.S.-South Korean exercise. “The situation on the Korean Peninsula is highly sensitive. We hope all relevant parties take more actions that would help ease tensions and refrain from provoking each other,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Geng Shuang said in Dec. 4 media briefing, reported the Korea Herald.
In Pyongyang, the rhetoric has reached high levels of shrillness. A commentary carried by state-run KCNA said Washington and Seoul are “hell-bent on the exercises simulating an all-out war against the D.P.R.K., including drills to strike the state leadership and nuclear and ballistic rocket bases, air fields, naval bases and other major objects of the D.P.R.K. and its command posts of front line units, armored equipment and personnel and long-range artillery units.”
“Particularly, the U.S. imperialists are staging an ultra-precision strike drill with high intensity just like in a real war focused on ‘removing’ the D.P.R.K.’s state leadership and core facilities by massively introducing the ultramodern stealth fighters,” said the KCNA commentary. “Owing to the U.S. imperialist warmongers’ extremely reckless war hysteria, a grave situation is prevailing in the Korean Peninsula that a nuclear war may break out any moment,” it added, after claiming that Washington has already issued orders for a simultaneous strike on at least 700 major military targets of the D.P.R.K. It’s not likely that such an order has actually been issued, but the KCNA description of the Vigilant Ace exercise is coherent with what has been reported in the U.S. and South Korean news media. Nikkei Asian Review reports that the two air forces will likely show off preemptive strike capabilities by rehearsing responses to a hypothetical detection of a missile launch, such as infiltrating North Korean airspace and destroying mobile launchpads or bombarding troop concentrations deployed at the militarized border.
Nikkei says that in addition to the U.S.-South Korean exercise, U.S. forces also conducted an exercise with the Japanese air force, though on a much smaller scale—four aircraft from each side.
Russia’s Points of Concern over U.S. Syria Policy
Dec. 5 (EIRNS)—In a dialogue with media during the Dec. 1 Mediterranean Dialogues international conference in Rome, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized two particular points of concern over current U.S. policy and actions in Syria which he said Russia is discussing with the U.S. directly.
First, Washington may be veering away from the commitment made by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and others that the only U.S. goal in Syria is to defeat ISIS, with talk of staying militarily in Syria “for a year and a half or two years to see that ISIS does not return.”
In Russia’s view, “when the war against ISIS is over, all the foreign troops that have not been invited there by the legitimate government of a UN member state and those that have not been deployed in keeping with a UNSC resolution (because no resolution has been adopted to this effect), will be obliged to pull out of the country,” Lavrov said.
Second, the United States having unilaterally established a 50 km safety zone around al-Tanf, near the Syrian border with Iraq and Jordan, is a possible attempt to split Syria. “The remaining ISIS terrorists regularly enter the Rukban refugee camp in this unilaterally established safety zone. We raise this matter in our contact with the United States,” he said. “I hope that it will eventually accept the arguments, which we provided through our military experts, that there is no need for this zone, unless the Americans want to split Syria and create in some of its parts pro-American local governments that would be autonomous from the central government. If the United States has no such plans, I hope we will settle this problem.”
Overall, Lavrov bluntly reiterated that the current crisis of migration, arms trafficking and terrorism in this region is a result of the overthrow and killing of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi. “We have to be careful … not to allow anyone to make similar mistakes in the future: destroy entire countries for the sake of dubious perspectives, impose one’s own way of life on peoples who have their own cultures, their own traditions. I think this is irresponsible. We don’t want to see another region turn into a china shop where all the china is broken.”
In discussing Russia’s goal of helping to restore “peace, stability, conditions for development and openness to the external world” in this region, Lavrov cited Russia’s hope of ensuring that “the age-old traditions of various ethnic and confessional groups living side by side” be restored.
President Vladimir Putin also emphasized this concern in his meeting on Monday with heads of local Orthodox churches. He raised, among other matters, religious persecution such as the brutality of the terrorists against Christians in Syria. Russia will give assistance to Christians in rebuilding their churches, Putin added. “We will also help representatives of other religions, including Muslims, who, as we know, have also suffered at the hands of militants, terrorists and extremists. We will also help Judaists. Some Jewish organizations have already asked us to help restore the Judaist temples,” he said.
British and Saudis Use Their Yemen Butchery To Try To Launch War against Iran
Dec. 5 (EIRNS)—The British Empire, through its Saudi asset and complicit elements in Washington, is trying to unleash a broader regional war against Iran throughout the Middle East. In Yemen, where the Saudi effort has gone into overdrive over the past three weeks, this is shown by the mantra followed by the Saudis and the Western media of constantly labeling the Houthi Ansarullah movement as “Iran aligned.” For instance, the Saudi Ambassador to Yemen Mohammed al-Jaber claimed that the so-called “crimes” committed by the Houthis are due in large part to their “Iranian education.”
Xinhua, in a Dec. 4 report, quotes a military commander loyal to the former Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was killed yesterday, reporting that “overnight, the [Saudi] coalition planes airdropped weapons and different kinds of communications equipment to the commanders who are leading the anti-Houthi uprising in Sana’a.” Xinhua also reported that the U.A.E. Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash tweeted on Dec. 3 “that the uprising against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels ‘needs support’ in order ‘to protect the Arabian Peninsula from Iran.’ ” Xinhua further reports that “pro-Saleh soldiers were also air-covered by Saudi-led warplanes during the overnight fighting with Houthis, who made progress and seized key neighborhoods in Sana’a.”
Tehran has responded strongly. “The people of Yemen will make their aggressors regret their actions,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a televised speech this morning, reported AFP. Tasnim quoted Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari hailing Saleh’s death as the latest episode in thwarting a series of plots, including in the Kurdistan region in Syria and in Iraq, all of which they blame on the Saudis.
Reports from sources on the ground in Yemen paint a grim picture of what would have happened if former President Ali Abdullah Saleh had managed to flee Sana’a and join the Saudi coalition. What they report is that a real civil war would have broken out in the capital and other areas that have been under control of the Houthi-Saleh coalition (i.e. the alliance between the Ansarullah movement/militia and Saleh’s General Popular Congress party, GPC).
The situation in the capital is now under control, and the Houthis are calling on the remaining leadership of the GPC to rejoin the alliance.
The Saudis have no capability to meet the irregular warfare launched by the Houthis in a mountainous country, where conventional armies and weapons are rendered obsolete, as in the case of Afghanistan. Without a force inside, like the failed Saleh coup, it is almost impossible to defeat such forces, as the case of Afghanistan shows. The only weapon that remains is mass starvation of the whole people.
On a regional scale, the Saudis and their backers in Britain and the U.S. are moving now to escalate against Iran. This flight forward and charging ahead for a military confrontation with Iran, could lead once again to the whole Gulf and Southwest Asia being set on fire.
Virginia State Senator Black Urges an End to U.S. Backing for Saudi Genocide against Yemen
Dec. 5 (EIRNS)—Virginia State Senator Richard Black called for the passage of H.Con.Res.81 and an end to U.S. support for terrorism, at a Capitol Hill forum. The forum, at which Senator Black made a major presentation titled “Terrorism and the Muslim Brotherhood,” was held in the Rayburn House Building on Nov. 29.
According to the invitation, the forum was organized by The London Center for Policy Research in collaboration with American Pulse TV, and it was sponsored by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX). The discussion included Congressman Gohmert; State Senator Black; Congressman Steve King (R-IA); U.S. Army Reserve Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (ret.), vice president of the London Center for Policy Research; Mr. Shafik Gabr, Egyptian entrepreneur and founder of the Shafik Gabr Foundation for the East-West Art of Dialogue; and Dr. Michael Morgan, Egyptian-American Senior fellow at the London Center and a TV presenter.
In his remarks, which reviewed the history of the failed U.S. policy of training and deploying terrorists in Afghanistan, Senator Black focused in on Saudi Arabia as a key originator of terrorism, and quoted former U.S. Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) on his conviction that there is a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out 9/11 and the government of Saudi Arabia. Turning to remedies, Senator Black called for passage of H.Con.Res.81 “urging removal of the U.S. armed forces from the brutal criminal war being waged by Saudi Arabia against the poor people of the Republic of Yemen.”
OTHER
Lavrov Reviews World Dangers and Opportunities
Dec. 5 (EIRNS)—Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gave a sober review of the global “mixed trends” as the world “has entered a period of transformation,” in remarks to the general meeting of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) on Nov. 28. The year 2017 has been “by far not the easiest,” he noted. “Conflicts continue to increase. Constructive interstate cooperation is on the decline, unfortunately. Unipolarity throwbacks raise concerns as one center of international influence wants to act like a hegemon resorting to fast-track decisions, military blackmail, and brute force in order to promote its goals.” He cited the Korean Peninsula, the Middle East, and Ukraine as among the complexities and turbulences.
Notably, he specified that “even though a major blow has been dealt to the terrorists who holed up there [in the Middle East], we have so far failed to transform the mixed but generally useful experience gained by various stakeholders in forming a global anti-terrorist coalition under the auspices of the UN,” as President Putin proposed two years ago.
“On the plus side,” Lavrov cited the Nov. 22 Russia-Turkey- Iran summit in Sochi, the resumption of Syrian talks in Geneva, work towards a Syrian Dialogue in Russia, and that “Russia’s strategic interaction with a number of large states, including within BRICS and the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization], continues to expand. The unification processes and projects in Eurasia actively continue, and major work is being done to harmonize the integration projects.”
“Overall, we are now going through a stage of mixed trends, which will continue. The world has entered a period of transformation,” he summed up. “Russia actively participates in forming a new, more just and democratic polycentric world order, the formation of which is a fact and a reality,” a process he views as lasting “for a long time.” It is the “relentless attempts to reverse this process, which, we believe, are one of the main reasons for today’s tensions in international relations,” he adds.
As for the RIAC’s activities, Lavrov suggested that the “Russia and India: Strategic Vision of Bilateral Relations and the Changing World Order” conference held on Oct. 12, be institutionalized as a regular event, comparable to the Russia-China Strategic Dialogues held each May.
