EDITORIAL
British Empire War Plans Already Back-firing
April 1 (EIRNS)—The Russian Embassy in London sent a list of 14 questions to the British Foreign Office which, in themselves, demonstrate the total fraud of the British declaration of Russian guilt for the nerve agent attack on two Russian citizens in Salisbury. Among the questions: Why has the U.K. presented no evidence; why have they broken several international laws and protocols to prevent access to the victims; what antidotes did the U.K. have on hand for the nerve agent, and how did they obtain them; do they have a control agent of the so-called Novichok; has the U.K. developed the agent themselves?
But also included in the list of questions is the revelation, not previously known, that the French are deeply involved in the investigation. Why, the Russians ask, and on what grounds? What U.K. legislation or international protocols allow for the French to be engaged in an attack on Russian citizens on U.K. soil, and what have the French been given access to?
Similar lists of questions went to the French Foreign Ministry and to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
These are questions which can and must be taken up by all interested parties—and it can be definitively stated that every person on Earth is an interested party when the British are provoking a conflict between nuclear powers.
President Trump has continued to say nothing against Russia since the scam was launched, including in his rally in Ohio last week, while he held a long productive phone call with President Putin without mentioning the phony charges against Russia. Although he did allow his administration to take the drastic measures against Russian diplomats and to close Russia’s consular facility in Seattle, the war-party spokesmen in both political parties and in the press are furious that he won’t personally join in the hysteria against Russia.
The Chinese took note of Trump’s personal silence, while Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang called on Russia and the U.S. to resolve the issue: “Russia and the U.S. are influential countries in the world, who share big responsibility for the world’s peace and security. We hope they will appropriately solve the dispute via dialogue based on equality and mutual respect.”
The absurdity of the British accusations, claiming certainty with absolutely no evidence, in a manner which pushes the world into an existential crisis, comes at a time that President Trump is emphasizing the destructive results of an earlier British scam—Tony Blair’s launching of the Iraq war based on similar lies, provoking destruction across Southwest Asia and the mass exodus from the multiple war zones, leaving millions homeless and aggravating the economic crisis in Europe with a mass refugee crisis. George W. Bush and Barack Obama swallowed the British lies gladly, willing to commit crimes against humanity to prove their allegiance to the Mother Country.
Not so President Trump, who repeatedly points to the $7 trillion wasted in these illegal and unjustified regime-change wars, killing thousands while the U.S. physical economy was rotting. He could (and should) add that speculators in London and on Wall Street were simultaneously looting additional trillions from the real economies of the Western nations.
India is increasingly working directly with China and Russia on productive investment projects, both among themselves and in third countries, especially in Africa. The work is being integrating through the international New Silk Road project initiated by Xi Jinping, and long promoted by Lyndon LaRouche.
On Oct. 10, 2009, Lyndon LaRouche delivered an address to the Seventh Annual Session of the Rhodes “Dialogue of Civilizations” Forum in Greece, defining an agreement of the “Four Powers”—Russia, the United States, China, and India—as the necessary combination required to end the global economic destruction unfolding across the West. These four great nations, he said, must “agree, as a group of countries, to initiate and force a reorganization of the world financial and credit system—under those conditions, with long-term agreements, of the same type that Franklin Roosevelt had uttered before his death, in 1944, under key nations, the intention of Roosevelt all these years later, could have been realized, and we could do that, today.”
This insight, and this program, is even more urgent today, but it is also more possible, due to the New Silk Road paradigm sweeping the world, and the potential that President Trump will carry out his intention to work with Putin and Xi Jinping to achieve this new paradigm. All patriots, and all citizens of the world, must act to this end.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Trump, in Ohio, Says Nothing about Russia, and Asserts U.S. Getting Out of Syria Very Soon
March 30 (EIRNS)—In speech at an Ohio training center for construction workers Thursday, Trump did not even mention the ongoing crisis with Russia, while touching on nearly every other issue of importance in the world today.
Most dramatically, he said: “We’re knocking the hell out of ISIS. We’ll be coming out of Syria like very soon. Let the other people take care of it now…. We are going to have 100% of the caliphate, as they call it, sometimes referred to as ‘land’…. But we are going to be coming out of there real soon. We are going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be.”
The war party went crazy. CNN, speaking for the left wing of the neocons, whined that Trump’s statement was a “win for Russia,” and that Trump was going against the sound advice from the Pentagon. “Trump’s remarks on pulling out of Syria,” CNN wrote, “were made just hours after chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana White told reporters that ‘important work remains to guarantee the lasting defeat of these violent extremists’ in the country. Despite Trump’s focus on the terror group’s dwindling control of territory, White said the military was focused on more than just ISIS-controlled areas, saying ‘our commitment to win must outlast the so-called physical caliphate…. We must not relent on ISIS or permit these terrorists to recover from their battlefield loses.’ ”
Reuters reports that two administration officials, unidentified, had told them that Trump’s comment during the speech reflected internal deliberations with advisors in which he has “wondered aloud” why U.S. forces should remain with the militants on their heels. “Trump has made clear that once ISIS and its remnants are destroyed that the United States would be looking toward having countries in the region playing a larger role in ensuring security and leaving it at that,” one official told Reuters.
Sessions Assigned a U.S. Attorney To Help Office of Inspector General Clean Up DOJ/FBI
March 30 (EIRNS)—Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent a letter March 29 to Sen. Charles Grassley and Representatives Robert Goodlatte and Trey Gowdy (chairs of Senate and House Judiciary and the House Oversight and Government Reform committees, respectively), advising them that the U.S. Attorney John Huber in Utah has been tasked to work with the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on its investigation into possible FBI and DOJ violations of laws and of established practices in 2016-2017.
The letter was in response to the request from these committees that a Special Counsel be appointed to investigate the DOJ and FBI with respect to the Russiagate investigation, particularly the use of the Steele dossier, abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), disclosure of classified information to the press, and the criminal investigation and case of former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, as well as the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation.
Sessions, in rejecting the request at this time for appointment of a special counsel, writes that Huber “is conducting his work from outside the Washington, D.C. area and in cooperation with the IG.” The IG’s Office, he notes, has a staff of some 470 people, and the IG is empowered to refer any evidence of criminal wrongdoing to a U.S. Attorney. Huber, unlike the IG, has the power to investigate those no longer at the FBI or the DOJ, and has subpoena power. Sessions’ letter does not give a date when Huber was delegated this responsibility, but it implies that it was done as of November last year.
Sessions adds that the “additional matters raised” in the March 6 letter from the two House committee chairmen “fall within the scope of [Huber’s] existing mandate,” and that he will make the Congressmen’s letters available to the DOJ leadership, Inspector General Michael Horowitz, and Huber. (That Goodlatte/Gowdy letter calls for appointment of a Special Counsel “to investigate potential bias and potential conflicts of interest and decisions made or not made by the Department of Justice in 2016 and 2017.”)
Representatives Goodlatte and Gowdy responded that “while we continue to believe the appointment of a second Special Counsel is necessary, this is a step in the right direction. We expect that U.S. Attorney Huber, given his reputation, will conduct an independent and thorough investigation. Such an investigation is critical to restoring the reputation of both the Bureau and DOJ in the eyes of the American people.”
New York Times Complains Trump Is Reluctant To Embrace Tougher Russia Policy
March 31 (EIRNS)—In an article today, the New York Timescomplains that, while his advisors continue to press for more aggressive action towards Russia, President Donald Trump, himself, is reluctant to change his personal approach of seeking good relations with President Vladimir Putin. Outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whose last day on the job is today, is identified with the anti-Russian shift that began weeks ago, and this view was “hardened by a conversation he had with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, during which Johnson described to him the [alleged] nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter.”
The Times article reports that Pentagon officials are not so sanguine, however, and are worried about the consequences of the collapse in U.S.-Russian relations for military deconfliction in Syria.
The New York Times observes bitterly: “Trump has remained publicly silent amid the dramatic rounds of diplomatic retaliation, leaving it to others to condemn Moscow.”
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
U.S. President in Brawl over Syria Policy
March 31 (EIRNS)—The policy brawl inside the White House and between President Donald Trump and the U.S. national security establishment more broadly on Syria policy, has broken further into the open in the two days since Trump said on Thursday night (March 29) that the U.S. military would soon be leaving Syria. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Trump has already ordered a freeze on $200 million that the State Department had planned to spend in Syria, supposedly for reconstruction.
But beyond the specific incident, the Journal argued, Trump’s action on Syria goes against all the advice he’s been getting, and effectively overthrows the policy that then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had announced at Stanford University in January 2018. In that speech, Tillerson had announced an open-ended U.S. military presence in Syria, not only to prevent a comeback by ISIS, but to attempt to influence the construction of a political settlement in Syria and to try to counter alleged Iranian “ambitions” in Syria.
“Trump cannot have a serious Iran strategy if he allows Tehran to win in Syria,” Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the neo-con Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Journal.
According to Associated Press, Trump’s aides thought they had convinced the President in January of the necessity of an open-ended U.S. military presence in Syria. This was when Trump apparently signed off on Tillerson’s speech. But by mid-February, Trump was telling his top aides in meetings that as soon as victory could be declared against ISIS, he wanted American troops out of Syria, unnamed officials told AP.
Shots Fired at Caravan of Brazil’s Former President Lula, Delivers Assassination Threat
March 30 (EIRNS)—Gunmen fired at former Brazilian President Lula da Silva’s presidential campaign caravan in the state of Paraná on March 27, hitting the sides and a window of two of the caravan’s three buses, around the same time that the caravan was forced to halt when one of the bus’s tires was punctured by nails strewn on the road that the caravan was passing. No one was hurt, but the use of firearms in the context of the attempted ambush marks a significant new threat against the former President, who is still leading in the polls for the 2018 presidential election.
Responsibility for creating the environment in which such an attack could occur lies with Judge Sergio Moro and the “Lava Jato” (“Carwash”) “anti-corruption” operation run by the same U.S. Department of Justice and FBI networks now caught attempting to oust U.S. President Donald Trump. Moro, whose operation has brought the institutions and economy of Brazil to their knees, is intent on jailing Lula da Silva, he hopes on April 4. After obtaining a conviction of Lula on the flimsiest of hoked-up charges, Moro demands that Lula be jailed now, even though his appeal process has not been exhausted.
Lula and his ally, illegally ousted former President Dilma Rousseff, both identified the attack as the product of “fascist militias.”
“What I see now is almost the rising of Nazism. If they think that this will scare us, they are wrong,” Lula tweeted after the attempt.
“Fascism is intolerable and will be denounced by everybody who believes in social justice and politics as a means to transform realities,” Rousseff tweeted.
Former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who has also been the target of numerous death threats, tweeted within hours of the incident: “Since neither political and judicial persecution nor the constant media smear campaign has touched him, now they are going for violence. Hold firm, Lula!”
The attack was carried out at the end of a two-week presidential campaign tour in southern Brazil which had already been the target of unprecedented egg- and stone-throwing protests, organized heavily by the Free Brazil Movement (MBL). The MBL played a leading role in organizing the mass demonstrations supporting the color revolution coup against Rousseff in 2016, espousing the rabid anti-government, free-market ideology of the Mont Pelerin Society’s Atlas Network which trained them. Since then, the group has been retooling itself as a “guerrilla” movement which intends to eradicate “Marxism” from Brazil., and from its politics, trade unions, and institutions.
U.S.-Russian Military Communications in Syria Improve Even as Diplomatic Ties Regress
March 30 (EIRNS)—Even as U.S.-Russian diplomatic relations disintegrate under the geopolitical assault directed from London, U.S.-Russian military communication in Syria seems to be on a long trajectory of improvement. During the same set of remarks on March 27 during which he accused Russia of attempted murder in Salisbury, England, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis reported that the U.S.-Russian communications line in Syria prevented an incident like that in February when the U.S. bombed a pro-government militia, which included Russian members, in Deir Ezzor.
The Syrian army, possibly along with some irregular forces, has been operating along the Euphrates River southeast of the city of Deir Ezzor in the recent period in an effort to clean up remnants of ISIS. “These were forces moving into more advanced positions, too close,” said Mattis. “Deconfliction discussions … between our chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford] and … his Russian counterpart, [Chief of the Russian General Staff] General [Valery] Gerasimov—and those elements fell back. So we have also drawn off slightly in order to maintain a deconfliction between the elements there,” he said. “So it looks like, this time, it was resolved through the deconfliction communication line. It did not … go into harm’s way, as it did there a month ago.”
Mattis clarified that this incident happened, last week, and that “we think that the potential for a clash there has, thanks to the Russian direction to this—this group—has been reduced.” It appears that this occurred not long after Gerasimov issued a warning against putting Russian troops, who are embedded with Syrian forces at all levels, in danger of any U.S. air strikes.
Two days after Mattis made his remarks, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force Gen. David Goldfein told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast that the U.S.-Russian communication line is becoming more mature as time passes. “Nothing has really changed in a way we are communicating. I will say that because we have been communicating for a while. But communication has become more mature,” he said, reported TASS. “Some of it has become more mature because we were able to establish some relationships between those that are at, I would say, more at a tactical level, day-to-day operations.” Goldfein explained that there’s a communications cell that works directly for Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, the USAF commander for Centcom, which is responsible for communicating with the Russians. “They talk every day, couple times a day as required. And so when there is potential for conflict (between Russian and U.S. military forces in Syria), neither side has any interest in miscalculation. It is in our best interests to ensure that we do not have folks that are in a wrong place or that we have surprises out there that our folks have got to deal with,” Goldfein said.
“So the communication has actually gotten a bit more mature and it continues to mature over time. We had instances even recently where that line has been very useful to ensure that both sides know what the other side is doing.”
A Curtailed Version of U.S.-South Korea Joint Military Exercise Has Begun
April 1 (EIRNS)—A combined field training of South Korean and U.S. troops got under way today as scheduled, but dramatically cut back, defense officials said, amid moves toward peace on the peninsula, the Yonhap news agency reported today. The combined drills, known as Foal Eagle and Key Resolve, take place as diplomatic relations have been thawing on the Korean Peninsula, with a summit between the two Koreas scheduled for late April and a meeting between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un anticipated for May, wrote USA Today.
The duration of Foal Eagle has been shortened to a month, with no major U.S. strategic assets such as supercarriers and nuclear subs expected to show up. According to Yonhap, “Some observers said Seoul and Washington are apparently playing low-key amid a let-up in North Korea’s provocations.”
The annual Foal Eagle drill field training involves some 11,500 American and 290,000 South Korean troops. The following two-week Key Resolve is a command-post war game. Thus the mass show of military forces will be finished before the scheduled summit between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un.
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Namibian President Strengthens Relations with China, Dubs It Best Friend of Africa
March 31 (EIRNS)—The Presidents of China and Namibia, Xi Jinping and Hage Geingob, agreed to establish a comprehensive strategic partnership for cooperation between their countries, and signed six bilateral cooperation agreements, at their meeting in Beijing on March 29. President Geingob had begun his seven-day state visit to China the day before.
At the signing ceremony, both Presidents spoke of how China has been an “all-weather friend of Namibia,” in reference to its support for Namibia’s independence, and now in its development. Xi said, “China welcomes Namibia to participate in the Belt and Road, and hopes to strengthen policy cooperation and synergy of development plans,” Xinhua reported. Xi spoke also of his belief that China and Africa will join hands to build a closer community with shared future and inject new impetus to China-Africa ties.
For his part, Geingob expressed Namibia’s interest in cooperating with China on infrastructure, sustainable development, human resources, technology, poverty reduction, people-to-people exchanges, and major cooperation projects. He also took the occasion to deliver an emphatic defense of China’s development efforts in Africa. Xinhua reported that the Namibian President called China Africa’s best friend. It never colonized Africa, and has always treated small and medium-sized African countries on an equal footing, and the African people oppose unfounded accusations against China, he stressed.
In an interview with China Global Television Network today, Geingob expressed his pride and appreciation for the elevation of relations with China to a comprehensive strategic partnership.
“China has been supporting us when things were bad, and then after independence, we continued [our cooperation] to another level,” he told CGTN. “Now we are moving up. Now it is the era of the second phase of the struggle for us, where people now have peace and stability, but they are anxious to get the benefits of that freedom. They want to prosper. They want to have shelter, infrastructure, schools, clinics, etc., and they are eager. They are in a hurry. So China, being the all-weather friend, who was there when we were first struggling, now that we are in the second phase of the struggle, that of economic emancipation, those who are with us, must come to join us…. This time, we are talking about creating a win-win situation.”
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
U.S. ‘May Very Well Miss the Great Opportunities’ in China’s Vast Market in a Trade War
March 31 (EIRNS)—A March 30 op-ed written by the Deputy Editor of China Daily USA Chen Weihua denounced the threats of trade war coming from Washington as part of a national security strategy to stymie China’s growth, in particular the high-tech industries that are part of its “Made in China 2025” strategy.
Attempts at “foiling China’s development of its high-tech industries are nothing but a containment strategy that is doomed to failure,” Chen stated. He attacked U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and White House trade advisor Peter Navarro for targeting precisely those high-tech manufacturing sectors that are part of the “Made in China 2025” strategy, and went on to say that “the ulterior motive of such U.S. actions is reflected in its recent National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy which repeatedly mentioned China and labeled it as strategic competitor and revisionist power that threatens the U.S. The underlined message is clear: The U.S. should do whatever it takes to prevent China from surpassing the U.S., whether economically, militarily or technologically.”
Chen warns that in trying to hurt China today, the U.S. will also hurt itself, since “the U.S. efforts will only make China more determined to pursuing its modernization strategy. And the U.S. may very well miss the great opportunities of the vast Chinese market, not to mention that the Chinese have a long memory about the countries that have inflicted harm on their nation.”
SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Compact Fusion Reactor Would Revolutionize Earth and Space Transportation
April 1 (EIRNS)—Aerospace/defense giant, Lockheed-Martin’s famous “Skunk Works,” known for its groundbreaking advances in aeronautics technology, has been working since 2014 on an alternative, non-tokamak compact concept for producing fusion energy. The company’s fusion research made it into the media recently as it was granted a patent in February for the compact fusion design.
The goal is a fusion reactor that can produce 100 MW of electricity, and that is small enough to be mounted on a truck, an aircraft, a ship, train, submarine, or spacecraft. A reactor of this size could power a city of between 50-100,000 people, and would be especially well suited to remote locations and for developing countries. Such a power source could also be crucial for desalination to provide fresh water. The advantages of cheap, universally available, and inexhaustible fuel are discussed, since 55 pounds of fuel is sufficient to run the reactor for a year.
Aspects of the challenging required scientific and technical developments have been undergoing testing in a progression of designs. In an interview with Aviation Week & Space Technology on 2014, Thomas McGuire, who was leading the fusion team, explained that it was possible with such a small reactor, to test new designs in less than a year. “We would like to have a prototype in five generations,” he said. The fusion team now hopes to have a prototype next year.
McGuire, who is an aeronautical engineer, explained in the interview that he began looking at fusion designs while in graduate school, under a NASA grant, “charged with how we could get to Mars quickly.” Being disappointed at what he found in the literature on fusion propulsion concepts, he set out to develop something new. Lockheed-Martin describes the compact fusion reactor as potentially creating a technology revolution.
OTHER
BoJo and Tony Blair and Dostoyevsky
March 30 (EIRNS)—The buffoon U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson made the mistake of quoting Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment in one of his war-mongering blusters against Russia. On March 29, Johnson referred to the “wearying barrage of Russian lies, the torrent of obfuscation” on the Skripal case, and fulminating that it was “rather like the beginning of Crime and Punishment, in the sense that we are all confident of the culprit, and the only question is whether he will confess or be caught.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, always sharp with her wit, responded that she doubted that “BoJo” had read past the opening passages. “Unlike you, we read, love, and know Dostoyevsky,” she told the press. She quoted another line from the book: “From a hundred rabbits you can’t make a horse, a hundred suspicions don’t make a proof.”
Zakharova pressed the attack: “Tony Blair might play the role of Raskolnikov. Everyone knew there were no weapons [in Iraq], and then he brought apologies.”
As for Johnson’s earlier comparison between Russia holding the World Cup this year and the Nazis sponsoring the Olympics in 1936, Zakharova pointed to the high-level British delegation that attended the 1936 Olympics. “Mr. Johnson, what did those honorable British sports officials do as Hitler’s guests? Tell it to your country,” she said.
