EDITORIAL
Russiagate Coup Attempt Is Crumbling Rapidly, as U.S. Population Want Trump To Succeed
Jan. 31 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union speech on Tuesday night has received an overwhelmingly positive response. CBS News, which generally plays a leading role in the “fake news” attacks on Trump, reported a 75% support for Trump’s speech from its viewers, and even CNN admitted that 70% of their viewers were “very positive” or “somewhat positive.”
Trump did not announce any major new policies, but emphasized that the optimism in the population and in the business community, due to his commitment to rebuilding the American economy and his tax cuts, had produced 2.2 million jobs, with 200,000 in manufacturing, “finally” began to increase wages, and encouraged pledges by the likes of Apple and Exxon to invest billions in the U.S. economy.
He took the high road, by saying nothing about the fact that the Mueller coup attempt is falling apart, and that many of the Obama intelligence team are almost certainly going to be facing charges for their official lies and criminal actions. The Democrat leadership, especially House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, were in a state of shock during the speech, scowling and grinding their teeth, refusing to applaud, even when Trump called for bipartisan cooperation to deal with immigration and infrastructure. Democrat Rep. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, like a growing number of Democrats who are furious that their leadership has absolutely no policy other than being anti-Trump, denounced his fellow Democrats for “sitting sullenly.”
But “Mueller-gate” was not absent, despite not being mentioned in the speech. Trump was asked on the way out of the Congress if he would approve the release of the Nunes memo, exposing crimes by the FBI in their surveillance of Trump’s campaign team on false pretenses. He responded “Yes, 100%.” Chief of Staff John Kelly went on the radio today to announce that the memo “will be released here pretty quick, I think, and the whole world can see it.”
What also has the “Russiagate” crusaders fuming is the fact that Trump essentially ignored the phony McCarthyite witchhunt against Russia, saying nothing about either Russia and China other than that they are “rivals.” This followed by 24 hours Trump’s refusal to post sanctions on Russia, or anyone else, as had been demanded by the Congress six months ago, with a six month deadline. The deadline passed on Monday, with the Administration simply stating that the sanctions were “not necessary.”
The fake-news New York Times and the neo-con Atlantic Council issued hysterical diatribes against the President, with the Timeseditorially accusing Trump of “sticking a thumb in Congress’s eye” by not imposing the sanctions, while the Atlantic Council’s Anders Aslund said Trump was “mocking U.S. sanctions on Russia overall.”
Around the world, reality is showing itself with new developments literally daily in the ongoing New Silk Road transformation of civilization. In the last 24 hours alone: A Chinese delegation in Oslo is planning a high-speed rail line from Oslo to Stockholm; a Chinese engineering company began work on a new deep-water port in Nigeria; the American Chamber of Commerce released a report showing that American businesses were optimistic about U.S.-China relations; Mexico’s Foreign Minister told his Congress that President Peña Nieto’s greatest achievement was the elevation of Mexico-China relations; China’s Finance Minister is in Argentina discussing the G20 meeting to be held in that country in November, but also discussing huge Argentine-China infrastructure projects, including tunnels, nuclear power plants, and cooperation in space.
One potentially important development—the Trump Administration announced that the name of Victor Cha had been removed from consideration as U.S. Ambassador to South Korea. Cha, a leading neoconservative now at CSIS, was the Bush administration’s representative to the Six Party Talks, where he played a leading role on behalf of Dick Cheney in preventing any progress. If President Trump is able to appoint a person with the excellent qualifications which he found to represent America in Russia and China—Ambassadors Jon Huntsman and Terry Branstad—it will go a long way to making a peaceful solution to the Korea crisis possible. While many leading figures in Washington and in the Pentagon, including some within Trump’s administration, are fanning the flames of conflict and war with Russia and China, Huntsman and Branstad speak truly for Trump’s intention for the United States to be friends and partners with Russia and with China.
With the Russiagate coup crumbling, and with Trump’s elevated position following the State of the Union speech, it is the opportune and necessary moment for him to join the New Silk Road, and to adopt Glass-Steagall and the full program contained in LaRouche’s Four Laws.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Chief of Staff Kelly: Nunes Memo To Be Released ‘Pretty Quick’; FBI Whines over ‘Inaccuracies’
Jan. 31 (EIRNS)—In remarks today to Fox News Radio, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said that the classified four-page memo prepared by the House Intelligence Committee, will be “released here pretty quick, I think, and the whole world can see it.”
“This President wants everything out so the American people can make up their own minds, and if people need to be held accountable, so be it,” said Kelly. He recalled that in the past, “where a President was in some kind of trouble, the President, the White House attempted to not release things. We’ve got our folks, the national security lawyers in the White House … they’re slicing and dicing in it, looking at it, so that we know what it means and what it understands.”
Needless to say, the FBI is in something of a panic. This afternoon, the Bureau issued an official statement expressing its “grave concerns” about the memo, and the “material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” The statement whines that the FBI was provided only “a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the [House Intelligence] Committee voted to release it.” It also mightily protests that, of course, the FBI “takes seriously its obligations to the FISA Court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals in the Department of Justice and the FBI,” and insisting that it is committed to working with the “appropriate oversight entities to ensure the continuing integrity of the FISA process,” that is, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
This morning, the Washington Post had put out a story, then picked up by the anti-Trump media, that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray had run to the White House on Monday, Jan. 29, specifically to urge Kelly not to release the memo, claiming it could jeopardize classified material and set a “dangerous precedent.” In reality, it was a previously scheduled meeting set to discuss “other matters.” The fake-news Post’s only sources for its report were people “who were briefed on the meeting.”
Trump Refuses To Impose ‘Mandated’ Sanctions on Russia
Jan. 31 (EIRNS)—In addition to complying with the letter of the disgusting “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act” (CAATSA) regarding its demand for a list of Russian officials and billionaires, while making abundantly clear there was nothing wrong with those on the list, President Donald Trump also simply refused to follow another part of the CAATSA law, Sections 231-235, which required that the President “shall” impose certain sanction within 180 days of the passage of the bill (which Trump openly opposed but signed rather than seeing his veto overridden by the Congress).
These mandatory sanctions are the “secondary” sanctions—against persons doing business with the Russian defense sector, contributing to Russian pipeline construction, or aiding “corrupt” privatization deals. Despite the mandate, the administration announced that the sanctions were “not necessary,” arguing that some deals with the Russian defense sector had already been cancelled due to the threat of sanctions (this could refer to Russia’s Alfa Bank, which announced Jan. 3 that the sanctions would make it impossible to continue doing business with the defense sector).
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, however, told the Congress Jan. 30 that the report should not be interpreted as meaning that the U.S. would not impose sanctions in the future.
As for the “list” of officials and billionaires, the report goes out of its way to be clear it was not a sanctions list:
“This report has been prepared and provided exclusively in response to Section 241 of CAATSA. It is not a sanctions list, and the inclusion of individuals or entities in this report, its appendices, or its annex does not and in no way should be interpreted to impose sanctions on those individuals or entities. Inclusion in this report also does not constitute the determination by any agency that any of those individuals or entities meet the criteria for designation under any sanctions program. Moreover, the inclusion of individuals or entities in this report, its appendices, or its classified annexes does not, in and of itself, imply, give rise to, or create any other restrictions, prohibitions, or limitations on dealings with such persons by either U.S. or foreign persons. Neither does inclusion on the unclassified list indicate that the U.S. Government has information about the individuals’ involvement in malign activities.”
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Syrian Dialogue Congress a Major Achievement
Jan. 31 (EIRNS)—The official documents and statements that were published overnight, suggest that the Syrian National Dialogue Conference in Sochi, Russia, was, indeed, a major accomplishment, despite the unhappiness of the regime-changers. First was the final statement of the Congress, itself, published by the Russian Foreign Ministry, which lays out the 12 principles for a political settlement of the conflict in Syria, including but not limited to: “Respect of and full commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and unity of the [Syrian Arab Republic/state of Syria] as a land and a people…; Respect of and full commitment to Syria’s national sovereign equality and rights regarding non-intervention…; The Syrian people alone shall determine the future of their country by democratic means, through the ballot box, and shall have the exclusive right to choose their own political, economic and social system without external pressure or interference.”
Secondly, was the ringing endorsement of the document by UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura, who told the Congress that he had taken note of the 12 principles which were “developed in the Geneva political process, which describe a vision of Syria that all Syrians should be able to share.” He also took note of the formation of a constitutional committee “comprising the government of the Syrian Arab Republic delegation along with a wide-represented opposition delegation for drafting a constitutional reform, and that your agreement is intended as a contribution—thank you again—to the political settlement under UN auspices in accordance with Security Council resolution 2254….
“And you have concluded that final agreement is to be reached in the UN-led Geneva process on the mandate, terms of reference, powers, rules of procedure, and selection criteria for the composition of the Constitutional Committee,” he said.
De Mistura told the Congress that he will indicate as soon as possible “how I intend to proceed on my mandated task under resolution 2254. Which means in practice setting in Geneva a schedule and process for constitution drafting. This way a Constitutional Committee can really and concretely be established and begin to work.”
There is still much work ahead for the peace process, particularly on how the constitutional committee will actually function, but the mere fact that the Congress, which was widely panned in the West before it convened, made such progress, is generating discontent in the Western media. Reuters, for example, complained that the final statement “made no mention of Assad.”
The Hawai’i False Alert of Nuclear War Was Intentional, Not Accidental
Jan. 31 (EIRNS)—The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Jan. 30 announced that the false alarm of a nuclear missile attack, which spread terror throughout the citizens and tourists in Hawai’i for 38 minutes on Jan. 13, was issued intentionally by the operative who pushed the button, not by accident as previously reported. The operative, who has been fired, listened to a drill which began and ended with “exercise” stated three times, but, for the first time, the contained message of the incoming ballistic missile also said “This is not a drill.” The operative believed that it was real and launched the alert.
The top officials at the Hawai’i Emergency Management Agency have resigned, and the operative was fired.
This incident further confirms the truth of many experts, including former Secretary of Defense William Perry, that the “launch on warning” posture, which is official U.S. policy, is reckless and must be ended, or an accidental nuclear war could become a reality.
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
Argentina’s Macri Anxious for Belt and Road Investment
Jan. 31 (EIRNS)—Yesterday, Argentine President Mauricio Macri met with Chinese Finance Minister Xiao Jie, to discuss the status of Chinese financing of several infrastructure projects, as well as the agenda for the November meeting of the G20, which Macri will host. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) figured prominently in the discussion, raised by Xiao Jie, according to the daily Infobae, and Macri said he is onboard with the global development project.
Macri has produced an economic disaster in Argentina, thanks to his neoliberal policies, and investments from Western bankers haven’t materialized, pending his agreement to smash the trade union movement and “lower labor costs.” He is anxious for financing.
When he took office in December 2015, he stalled on moving forward with large infrastructure projects that former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had signed. But he and Xiao Jie discussed completing details on several previously agreed on projects which the multilateral Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is also interested in financing. Argentina joined the AIIB last year, after Macri attended the BRI Forum in Beijing last May.
Projects include increasing connectivity through the $1.5 billion plan to build the Agua Negra tunnel through the Andes, which will connect the Chilean province of Coquimbo with the Argentine province of San Juan; financing construction of the large hydroelectric project in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz; building two new nuclear reactors, worth $15 billion; completing the space-tracking, telemetry, and command center in the Patagonian province of Neuquén, operated by a unit of the People’s Liberation Army, as well as the Belgrano Cargas and other railroad lines.
Indonesian General: U.S. Democracy Not as Appropriate To Help Development, as China Is
Jan. 31 (EIRNS)—Lt. Gen. Agus Widjojo (ret.), the most respected military expert in Indonesia, “explained” to the U.S.-Indonesia Society (USINDO), on Jan. 30, that the U.S. “form of democracy” may not be “compatible with long-term support” for countries like Indonesia.
In a very hard-hitting presentation to the elite of the U.S. Indonesia hands (diplomatic, think tank, military, and business) at USINDO, General Widjojo explained why China and the Belt and Road are looked to far more that the U.S. for help in development.
“China is enjoying the fruits of hard work, having enjoyed a long period without interference from foreign forces,” he said. “They are extremely creative and innovative. They do not stick stubbornly to the communist ideology, but maintain strong central authority, while moving to an open economy. They left behind the pursuit by military means, which they recognized benefits no one. They stand out as the only country with money for infrastructure, and send cheap labor to help when the labor is not available. You can see the results in Africa, see what the Belt and Road has done.”
EIR then asked him to comment on the fact that nearly all infrastructure development in Indonesia is being built by China, despite major efforts to get U.S. companies to invest. EIR noted that the Western nations demand government guarantees for investments, which killed the Indonesian economy in the 1998 crisis, asking, “How can we get the U.S. to do it right, like the Belt and Road?”
General Widjojo responded that the answer was contained in the question, and stated: “After World War II, and through the 1960s, the U.S. was seen as the champion of independence and democracy. Everyone looked to the U.S., to improve the welfare of the people. Then things changed. Different administrations came in, changing policies every time. There was no long-term support. The Russians, on the other hand, were consistent, and not ideological, offering complete assistance.
“How can we get the U.S. to change? That’s up to the U.S., but I’m not sure long-term support is compatible with the U.S. form of democracy. We’d like to see long-lasting support which will not fade away—and which is not tied to political baggage.”
EIR assured him that the U.S. could be brought to be “compatible” with development if the LaRouche movement succeeds in getting the U.S. to join the New Silk Road.
China Working on ‘Peace Subsea Cable’ To Link East Africa with South Asia
Jan. 31 (EIRNS)—A statement from China’s Huawei Marine reveals that it was completing a “desktop study” for a new submarine cable system, dubbed the “Peace Subsea Cable” whose first phase is meant to connect South Africa, Kenya, Djibouti, Somalia and Pakistan.
“Peace” in the Peace Subsea Cable is an acronym for “Pakistan East Africa Cable Express.” The system was designed by a Chinese firm, Tropic Science, “to provide a new information expressway for interconnection among Asia, Africa, and Europe by connecting with existing land and subsea cables,” according to the joint statement by Tropic Science and Huawei Marine. The report further explains that Huawei Marine would begin a marine survey on Jan. 15, with the Peace system expected to be ready for service in the fourth quarter of 2019.
The first phase will span some 6,200 km and would link Pakistan (Gwadar and Karachi) with Djibouti, Somalia and Kenya. The second phase would provide an “extended option” to South Africa and Europe with a total length of about 13,000 km, based on 200G dense wave-division multiplexing technology on a design capacity of 60tbs (terabits/s).
Tropic Science chairman He Liehui said the system will become “an important infrastructure for Asian, African and European intercontinental communications and promote economic development of the regions.”
Chinese Firm Begins Construction of Modern Nigerian Port To Enhance Its Global Trade
Jan. 31 (EIRNS)—“China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) has begun work on Lekki Port, a $1.5 billion project to build a deep-water harbor to relieve pressure on Nigeria’s main port of Lagos. CHEC has started on the breakwater for the port, which is located on the southeastern outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. Once complete, the 16.5m-deep harbor and modern cranage will make Lekki one of the leading ports in Sub-Saharan Africa and a regional transshipment hub, said developer Lekki Port LFTZ Enterprise (LPLE),” Global Construction Review (GCR) reported today.
The facility, located within the Lagos Free Trade Zone (LFTZ), is expected to be one of the most modern ports, supporting the burgeoning trade across Nigeria and the entire West African region as well as providing the connection to global shipping network, Nigeria’s Guardian newspaper wrote. The project is being promoted by Tolaram Group (Lead Sponsor), and the Nigerian Port Authority, with Lagos State Government as equity investors. Other schemes planned or under way in the region include Senegal’s Port de Futur, Côte d’Ivoire’s Abidjan, Ghana’s Tema, Cameroon’s Kribi and Nigeria’s Badagry. Togo’s Lomé was complete in 2016, GCR reported.
When completed, Lekki Port will be able to handle 2.7 million containers a year and will be surrounded by the LFTZ, which the Nigerian government hopes will attract foreign investment in factories to boost the country’s manufacturing sector.
SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
60th Anniversary of First U.S. Satellite
Jan. 31 (EIRNS)—On Jan. 31, 1958 the U.S. succeeded in placing its first satellite in Earth orbit. The Explorer 1 science satellite was built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The scientific instrument which would discover the Earth’s radiation belts was the responsibility of James Van Allen at the University of Iowa. And the rocket that would launch it was built by the team at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama, headed by Wernher von Braun.
Today NASA is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the launch, and the opening of the scientific study of the Earth from space. The National Academy of Sciences is hosting a half-day symposium for the anniversary.
