EDITORIAL
Desperate British Attack Frees Trump from ‘Populist’ Mythology
Jan. 3 (EIRNS)—With Russiagate crumbling from under the feet of the would-be gods of Olympus, the British have taken such desperate measures to save their attempted coup against the President of the United States that they have inadvertently freed the President from the straitjacket of “populism,” which was in fact thrust upon him by the same coup-plotters, to limit his capacity to act.
This was precipitated by two panicked, and pathetic, operations unleashed from London over the past 48 hours, aimed at reviving the moribund and discredited Russiagate. First, Fusion GPS honchos Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch ran an op-ed in the New York Timesclaiming they had saved America from “an attack on our country by a hostile foreign power,” by hiring British intelligence “Russia expert” Christopher Steele to put together what Trump correctly labeled a “pile of garbage.” Second, gossip columnist Michael Wolff, whose other work was a biography of Rupert Murdoch, slipped a pre-release copy of his new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, to the British intelligence leak sheet the Guardian, which published selections from the book quoting Steve Bannon, the anti-China, anti-Russia whacko who has continued claiming he is one of Trump’s closest advisors, despite having been fired from the White House. Bannon is quoted saying that the meeting between Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump, Jr. with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 was “treasonous,” “unpatriotic,” and “bad shit.”
What was Trump’s response? He immediately released a statement which says, bluntly, as is his wont (with an included reference to Franklin Roosevelt):
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind…. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country…. Steve doesn’t represent my base—he’s only in it for himself. Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.”
Consider this a declaration of independence from the right-wing populist clap-trap which has tried to woo Trump away from his commitment to establish friendly relations with Russia and China. Bannon and his Breitbart news site spend most of their time calling for preparations for confrontation, both economic and military, against Russia and China. Their only basis for defending Trump against Robert Mueller’s Russiagate witchhunt has been to accuse Hillary Clinton, rather than Trump, of collusion with the big, bad Russian bear—distorting the very real fact that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were hell-bent on starting a war with Russia and China, which was only prevented by Clinton’s defeat in the presidential election.
Increasingly, Trump’s real base is concerned about only one thing—that he better succeed in rebuilding American industry and the crumbling infrastructure, creating thousands of jobs, or he will lose his strong support from working people. Trump is holding several meetings this week to prepare a campaign for a national infrastructure policy. Even if they come up with a competent program, it will be missing the means to finance it, which will be impossible without taking on the massive speculative bubble which has set the Western banking system on a course for a near-term collapse far greater than that of 2008. The years-long fight by Lyndon and Helga LaRouche and their organization to restore Glass-Steagall, re-establish a National Bank, and unleash the industrial and scientific potential of this nation is increasingly reflected in discussions from every side of the political spectrum, as seen in reports below.
But there is little time. The financial crisis, if not resolved through taking down the speculative bubble, will explode, and destroy any effort to Make America Great Again. While the LaRouche Political Action Committee continues to circulate the exposure of “Legal Assassin Robert Mueller,” we are now also providing every Senator, every Congressman, and thousands of regional political and social leaders, with the pamphlet “LaRouche’s Four Laws & America’s Future on the New Silk Road.” This is Trump’s necessary path to victory.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
President Trump Releases Statement on Steve Bannon, Jan. 3, 2018
Jan. 3 (EIRNS)—The following was released today:
From press secretary Sarah Sanders:
Statement from the President of the United States
Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.
Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base—he’s only in it for himself.
Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.
We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda. Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.
Fusion GPS’s Simpson Dragged Out To Save Russiagate
Jan. 3 (EIRNS)—With the coup-party behind Robert Mueller’s witchhunt against Trump frantic about the onrushing collapse of Russiagate, they gave Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, the founders of Fusion GPS, an op-ed in the New York Times, called “The Republicans’ Fake Investigations.” The pathetic duo portray themselves as the saviors of America for their fearless exposure of Trump’s crimes. “The goal was to alert the United States national security community to an attack on our country by a hostile foreign power,” they rant.
“Yes, we hired Mr. Steele, a highly respected Russia expert,” they write, and saying that they told him the task was to answer the question: “Why did Mr. Trump repeatedly seek to do deals in a notoriously corrupt police state that most serious investors shun?” Clearly an impartial investigation.
They claim the Steele dossier was not the “trigger for the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling,” but that the dossier “was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the Trump camp.” Perhaps that was Bannon?
They lie that “credible allegations of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia were pouring in from independent sources during the campaign.” And then, with images of the famous scene in the movie “Casablanca,” that “What came back shocked us. Mr. Steele’s sources in Russia (who were not paid) reported on an extensive—and now confirmed—effort by the Kremlin to help elect Mr. Trump president. Mr. Steele saw this as a crime in progress and decided he needed to report it to the FBI.” What a kind expression of thanks to British intelligence for trying to bring down the government of their lost colony.
Binney Warns: Warmongering Russiagate Lies Must Be Stopped
Jan. 3 (EIRNS)—Top National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney again slammed the dangerous “Russiagate” fraud in an interview with Dennis Bernstein published by ConsortiumNews on Jan. 1, headlined “The Still-Missing Evidence of Russia-gate.” Bernstein spoke to Binney on Dec. 28, one week after VIPS released its latest memorandum to the President, published on the webpage ConsortiumNews reserves for “VIPS Memos.”
Asked by Bernstein about why he is concerned “about the Russia-gate investigation and the McCarthyite tactics that are being employed,” Binney cut to the chase:
“Ultimately, my main concern is that it could lead to actual war with Russia. We should definitely not be going down that path. We need to get out of all these wars. I am also concerned about what we are doing to our own democracy. We are trampling the fundamental principles contained in the Constitution. The only way to reverse all this is to start indicting people who are participating in and managing these activities that are clearly unconstitutional.”
Binney will be speaking in New York City on Jan. 5 at 7:00 p.m. along with his fellow Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) member Ray McGovern and LaRouche PAC’s Barbara Boyd at LaRouche PAC’s Town Hall meeting on the subject “End the Coup, Stop the Next War and Build the World Land-Bridge.” LaRouche PAC will stream it live on its website.
Brits Expose Steve Bannon as Their Agent against the U.S.
Jan. 3 (EIRNS)—Today’s Guardian of London today trumpeted that Breitbart executive and fired former Trump advisor Steven Bannon called Donald Trump, Jr.’s June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer “treasonous,” demonstrating once again the precision of LaRouche PAC’s identification of the British Empire as the author and executor of the assault on the Trump Presidency.
The Guardian has been playing a leading role in this British intelligence operation. One of its “journalists,” Luke Harding, published a book Collusion: How Russia Helped Trump Win the White House, to prop-up MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s discredited “dodgy dossier.” Now, along with New York Magazine, the Guardian was provided an advance copy of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, the book to be released next week by Michael Wolff, an American journalist with his own evident British ties; one of Wolff’s claims to fame is his prior biography of British-Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The author of this “explosive book” promoted by the Guardian also enjoys a reputation for being a self-serving, vicious liar. (“ ‘His great gift is the appearance of intimate access,” says an editor who has worked with Wolff. “He is adroit at making the reader think that he has spent hours and days with his subject, when in fact he may have spent no time at all,’ ” wrote Michelle Cottle, on Aug. 30, 2004 for New Republic, one of many such reviews.)
Fire and Fury purports to be based on some 200 interviews with people in the Trump White House, where he claims he was given “extraordinary access” to senior officials and advisors. According to the Guardian, “the central figure in the nasty, cutthroat drama” is Steve Bannon; that is, Bannon is Wolff’s main source.
Another excerpt from the book, run in New York Magazine today, is pure gossip, a cheaper version of Steele’s “dodgy dossier,” without the “golden showers” or sex, purporting to be a “behind the scenes” report of what Trump, his family and his advisors really thought and did.
The Guardian report is all Bannon spewing his typical bile, now directed at President Trump and family: his preposterous “treason” charge against Paul Manafort and Donald Trump, Jr., spiced up with forecasts that Mueller is “going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.”
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Saudis Back Terrorist Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK) as ‘Alternative’ in Iran
Jan. 3 (EIRNS)—One of the striking characteristics of the past week of protests in Iran is the apparent lack of a leadership organization behind them. The Green Movement that led the protests against the tainted presidential election of 2009, mostly made up of the reformist faction, has remained absent this time around, with the reformist leaders mostly distancing themselves from the protesters. There doesn’t appear to be a government-in-waiting that those who dream of “regime-change” in Tehran can install in place of the government. However, Al Arabiya, the Saudi-owned news channel, has a suggestion: the National Council for Resistance in Iran (NCRI), the political front for the terrorist Mujahideen e-Khalq Organization (MEK/MKO). The MEK was on the U.S. State Department list of foreign terrorist organizations from 1997-2012 because of its decades-long history of violence and terrorism, including against Americans in the 1970s.
This history apparently is no obstacle to Saudi support of the MEK as an alternative political leadership for Iran, however.
“The ongoing protests in different cities against the regime reveal the explosive state of Iranian society and the people’s desire for regime change,” Al Arabiya quotes NCRI president Maryam Rajavi as saying. Rajavi asserted that the “Iranian people demand the overthrow of the ruling religious dictatorship. It is their right to topple this repressive regime. And I emphasize: Regime change in Iran is within reach.” Al Arabiya gushes that Rajavi’s ten-point plan for Iran “is a clear blueprint for a free and democratic Iran void of nuclear weapons; in peace and harmony with its neighbors and the rest of the world; upholds women’s rights and the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in the country and many more progressive plans for Iran.” Al Arabiya further reports that the MEK “has put to use its widespread network inside Iran and its satellite TV Simay-Azadi’s citizen reporters are sending their video and internet messages of Iran’s cities to the world 24/7.”
In the United States, the neo-conservatives have long seen the MEK as a tool for overthrowing the government of Iran and the religious clerics who dominate it. They waged a long campaign for the getting the MEK delisted as a terrorist group, which finally succeeded in 2012 when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement claiming that they had renounced violence. The neo-cons’ relationship with the MEK continues to this day, as was shown in August when three senior Republican members of the U.S. Senate—Roy Blunt (MO), John Cornyn (TX), and Thom Tillis (NC)—met with Rajavi in Tirana, Albania, in August 2017.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani raised the issue of the MEK in a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, yesterday. Rouhani bluntly told Macron that the MEK, which has maintained its headquarters in Paris for decades, must be shut down.
“We expect the French government to take its legal responsibility to combat terrorism and violence,” said Rouhani, criticizing the French governments allowing a terrorist group to maintain a base in Paris, which is operating against the Iranian people, and provoking and persuading people to take violent actions in Iran, according to Tasnim.
Kim Jong-un Reopens Communication Line to South Korea
Jan. 3 (EIRNS)— Pyongyang has re-opened the communications channel between South and North. According to a report this morning in the Korea Herald, the North called the South through the Panmunjom truce center at 3:30 p.m. local time, today. According to the Ministry of Unification, the call lasted 20 minutes, during which the two sides’ communications officers checked for possible faults in the inter-Korean connection.
North Korea broke its silence earlier in the day, when Ri Son-kwon, the head of North Korea’s agency handling inter-Korean affairs, announced the plans to reconnect the line at 3:00 p.m. (North Korea time is 30 minutes behind South Korea time). Ri said that Kim welcomes President Moon Jae-in’s orders given at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, to make preparations for North Korea’s participation in the Winter Olympics, and said that Kim stressed that improving inter-Korean relations were up to the governments of the two Koreas, hinting at Pyongyang’s concerns over U.S. involvement.
The re-opening of the phone line was welcomed in Seoul.
“Re-establishing communications is significant. It is deemed that [inter-Korean communications] is taking on a structure that allows communications at all times,” said Yoon Young-chan, senior presidential press secretary. He further said, “I believe it signals a move toward an environment where communication will be possible at all times.”
South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha spoke by phone with U.S. Secretary Rex Tillerson today, explaining Seoul’s position regarding the opening to the North.
Nikki Haley, John Bolton’s protégé now as the UN ambassador, typically made an ass of herself when asked about the opening of talks between the two Koreas: “We won’t take any of the talks seriously if they don’t do something to ban all nuclear weapons in North Korea…. North Korea can talk with anyone they want, but the U.S. is not going to recognize it or acknowledge it until they agree to ban the nuclear weapons that they have.”
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Europe and U.S. Have a Choice: Join China’s Belt and Road, or Take a Back Seat
Jan. 3 (EIRNS)—Looking back at 2017 and ahead to 2018, Brian Caplen, editor of The Banker, a monthly owned by Financial Times, writes that it makes sense for Western business to join China’s Belt and Road, a “massive investment in infrastructure that requires $1.3 trillion from lenders such as China’s big four state-owned [sic] banks, which lent $90 billion to connected projects in 2017; China Development Bank, which has set aside $900 billion; the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank; and the New Development Bank. China has also set up a $40 billion Silk Road Fund.
“Western institutions and companies face the usual dilemma in considering a Chinese-led venture. Do they join an enterprise they have misgivings about, or take a back seat?” Caplen asks.
“…But whatever reservations Western business leaders may have, OBOR is going ahead and is epoch making. The only sensible position is to get involved, insist on high standards and earn whatever profits are available….
“Chinese companies are taking full advantage by acquiring logistics centers and ports in OBOR countries. Business connections are being made, even in areas unconnected with infrastructure and construction such as digital advertising. Western business leaders should put their concerns aside and make the most of this opportunity. They may even improve its implementation in the process.”
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
China Will Have 38,000 km of High-Speed Rail by 2025
Jan. 3 (EIRNS)—Xinhua reports this increase, up from the 25,000 km registered by the end of 2017. China’s high-speed rail tracks accounted for 66.3% of the world’s total by the end of 2017, said Lu Dongfu, general manager of China Railway Corp. Its fixed asset investment on railways in 2018 will be 732 billion yuan (about $112 billion), less than the annual average during 2013-2017, according to Lu. Of the 4,000 km of new rail lines to be constructed this year, 3,500 km will be high-speed rail tracks.
China’s total railway network will hit 175,000 km by 2025, compared with 127,000 km of operating tracks by the end of last year. In 2017, a total of 3.04 billion passenger trips were made on railways, up 9.6% year on year. More than 56% of those trips were made on high-speed railways.
The maximum speed of China’s bullet trains rose to 350 kmh when Fuxing (Rejuvenation) bullet trains started operation between Beijing and Shanghai on Sept. 21, 2017.
Last year, there were 3,600 cargo train trips made between China and European cities, surpassing all the previous six years combined, Lu said.
SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Public-Private Partnerships Would Wreck President Trump’s Moon Program
Jan. 3 (EIRNS)—As it gets closer to the White House’s February release of its FY19 budget request for NASA, there is a push from free market promoters and “new space” entrepreneurs for NASA to plan its return to the Moon, and other exploration programs, in “partnership” with the “private sector.” This proposal, that returning to the Moon should be left to a leaderless group of mostly new and largely inexperienced and untested companies, would detroy President Donald Trump’s announced intention for a bold manned space program.
In order to promote the private sector’s role in future exploration programs, President Kennedy’s Apollo program is denigrated as “flags and footprints.” In a Jan. 1 op-ed in The Hill by Ioana Cozmuta, who organizes commercial space partnerships, and Adam Routh, from the Center for a New American Security, state that in order to have a “routine presence” in space, NASA needs to be “transitioned” to a new way of doing business. “With the recent successes by the commercial sector,” they write, space is no longer the “domain” for governments, or by governments.
They assert that the “swings” in programs since Apollo is “negatively affecting the morale of the working force.” The irony here is that for the sixth year in a row, NASA has ranked first as the top government agency in which to work.
A similar effort to demoralize space supporters and steer Administration policymakers to go the private route, was a Jan. 1 article by Andy Pasztor for the Wall Street Journal, on a report released last month written for NASA by a team led by Joel Sercel, who is described as a “fledgling space entrepreneur.” The report was commissioned before the 2016 election.
NASA is facing schedule and spending pressures, he asserts, so “NASA must dramatically change the way it works. Public-private partnerships should become the cornerstone of NASA’s plans, not an adjunct to them.” The report calls for shifting space programs to commercial companies, “which are poised to vie with NASA for sending manned missions beyond low Earth orbit,” apparently without mentioning that no company has even yet sent astronauts into low Earth orbit.
The United States will make a manned return to the Moon when it is put forward as a national mission, with the full backing of the President, and with the resources for NASA to carry it out.
