EDITORIAL
LaRouche: ‘A Four-Power Agreement Can Create a New World Credit System’
May 2 (EIRNS)—The British Empire and allied forces have launched a series of coordinated attacks globally, designed to ensure that no lasting coalition for development and peace is formed around the planet’s four leading powers—Russia, China, India and the United States. These attacks include escalating provocations intended to unleash surrogate war in the Middle East (Iran and Syria); in Ukraine; and on the Korean Peninsula—all designed to ultimately escalate to a global war of the U.S. against Russia and China.
At the same time, and with closely choreographed timing, those same British forces have escalated their witch-hunt against President Donald Trump, resorting to fishing expeditions as transparently egregious as they are dangerous. The latest is the leaked threat that Special Counsel Robert Mueller may subpoena President Trump to answer his also-leaked 40 questions, should the President refuse to do so “voluntarily.”
President Trump himself answered pointedly in a tweet this morning: “There is no Obstruction of Justice (that is a setup & trap). What there is is Negotiations going on with North Korea over Nuclear War….”
To put a sharp point on it: The British drive for war and the British drive to overthrow the President of the United States, are parallel operations with a single strategic objective. There can be no successful defense of the Presidency against the Mueller dirty operation, without also stopping the drive to use Iran, Syria, Korea, and Ukraine to unleash war against Russia and China. Conversely, the British drive for war and overthrowing the entire Westphalian system by ripping valid international law to shreds with military strikes and wars, cannot be stopped without defeating the Mueller-FBI coup against President Trump.
Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike—as well as people in other nations—need to wake up to this fact, before it is too late. You cannot choose which part of the single, British operation you wish to oppose, and which you wish to support, based on your sincerely-held ideological prejudices.
The time has come for morality guided by science, in the manner exemplified by Lyndon LaRouche’s proposal for a Four-Power agreement.
LaRouche’s first major public presentation of this policy idea came in a Dec. 3, 2008 Forum for Strategic and Security Studies in New Delhi, India. LaRouche expanded on the strategy in an Oct. 10, 2009 address delivered to the Seventh Annual Session of the World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilizations. LaRouche summarized this Rhodes speech at a private luncheon for diplomats in Washington, on Nov. 4, 2009.
The excerpt below of those luncheon remarks were made nearly four years before Chinese President Xi announced his policy of the New Silk Road, today known as the Belt and Road Initiative.
“It was my job [at Rhodes] to present clearly what a Four-Power agreement among the United States, Russia, China, and India, and other countries brought into the same agreement, would mean for the planet. It would mean that we would have a convention, an agreement on forming a new system, scrapping the present monetary system, which can be scrapped because it is already bankrupt….
“Russia and China were on the verge of a negotiation, in this period, in which China has a trillion-dollar obligation of the United States, which is owed to China…. What happened between the negotiations between Russia and China, was essentially an arrangement to utilize the legitimate debt which China is owed against the United States’ promises, and to use that; monetize it, by investing it in something productive, which would be useful for Asia. And Russia and China agreed on a very large-scale project of transportation and related systems.
“The intent was not to stop there: The intent is to extend this kind of agreement to Southeast Asia generally, and to include India. The intention of some of us, is to bring the United States into the same arrangement. Because, the combined power of the United States, Russia, China, India, and nations who wish to be associated with them in this kind of venture, is the greatest financial, economic power on the planet. If that planetary power decides to do what must be done, we can reorganize and rebuild the world, and shift quickly from a downward process, into an upward process. That’s our option.
“The key thing has to be: the United States, Russia, China, and India. Without an agreement among those four nations, such a recovery of the world is not possible. With those four nations, and other nations—such as, immediately, Southeast Asia, Korea, Japan, and so forth—other nations come in, and now we’re talking about the possibility of a general program, of creating a new, world fixed-exchange-rate system, as a credit system, not a monetary system, but a credit system of fixed-exchange rate agreements, for long-term cooperation, in infrastructure investments, which will be drivers for the development of productive investments.
“By infrastructure, we mean, first of all, large-scale transportation: modern rail, and superior to rail [mag-lev], of land transport. The object is to be able to travel by land across Eurasia, through the Bering Strait, into the Americas, and through the Middle East, into all of Africa. We can thus make connections, in these kinds of mass transit, which are more efficient than water-borne transport, and which will be a driver for development in every area through which such rail and related systems travel.”
NEW WORLD ECONOMIC ORDER
‘China, India Must Strive for Harmony,’ Op-Ed Urges after Xi-Modi Meeting
May 2 (EIRNS)—That is the headline on a May 1 Global Times op-ed by Prof. Liu Zongyi of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, discussing the potential of last week’s informal summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Professor Liu makes it clear that there are those in the West who are engaged in a “conspiracy to drive a wedge” between China and India, but he makes a strong case for the two countries to mend fences in order to “reach a strategic consensus” and “promote the rejuvenation of Asian civilizations.”
Liu’s is only one among many editorials published by Chinese media over recent days, focusing on the significant strategic potential of the Xi-Modi summit. Most of these do not expect Modi to formally join the Belt and Road Initiative until after the 2019 elections in India, so as not to appear to be making concessions to China, but progress on specific joint projects is likely—including in Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, etc.
Liu writes: “China and India led the development of human civilizations before modern times, but were bullied by the West in modern history. If the two emerging economies can develop their relations into an intimate partnership and a new type of major-country relations, there is great hope for the rapid rise of China and India and the revival of Asia. However, Western countries may not be resigned to losing leadership and dominance over the world that have lasted hundreds of years.
“As the world is undergoing profound changes, Beijing and New Delhi should ponder whether to promote the rejuvenation of Asian civilizations or to fall into conflict and confrontation because of the West’s conspiracy to drive a wedge between them. Leaders of China and India should reach a strategic consensus.”
China Daily ran an op-ed by Buddhi Prasad Sharma, of Nepal, a PhD candidate at Communication University of China, to similarly argue that “Sino-Indian relationship will enter a new era of cooperation,” despite those who would like them to remain in conflict with each other. “Though some hardliner politicians and experts in India don’t want to see Sino-Indian rapprochement and cooperation, history shows that when these two giants maintained understanding and peace, both gained enormously. When they are in confrontation, that created a very pessimistic environment in regional peace and order. So like Rajiv Gandhi’s 1988 visit to China, the recent visit by Modi and his very exclusive discussion with Xi could play a vital role in enhancing the bilateral relationship on one hand and also contribute to regional and international peace, harmony and development. So we can conclude that the result of the Xi-Modi informal talks in Wuhan offers glimpses of a new era on Sino-Indian all around cooperation.”
China To Open Its Longest High-Speed Rail Line This Summer
May 2 (EIRNS)—A 343-kilometer high-speed rail link between Harbin and Jiamusi in Heilongjiang province, in the cold northeastern region of China, will open in July-August 2018, which is the longest high-speed rail link in the world. According to Xinhua, temperatures in the region can reach −35° Celsius in the winter which, along with the high altitude of the entire run, poses special challenges for construction of the line, as well as for running it for passengers and cargo.
Both passengers and cargo will be transported at a speed of 200 kph on this route. This is a relatively high speed for cargo. Today, China’s fastest cargo trains travel at 160 kph, having been put in service in 2014. France also runs freight trains at 160 kph, but most freight trains in both Europe and the United States travel at 100 kph (60 mph) or slower. The planned Moscow-Kazan line is expected to carry both passengers and freight at 350-400 kph.
From the standpoint of physical economy, high-speed rail is not appropriate for bulk cargo, such as grain or coal. But it does make sense for time-sensitive containerized cargo, including electronic and other industrial goods, and perishable foodstuffs.
Dominican President Wants Ties with Beijing
May 2 (EIRNS)—Speaking yesterday on why he decided to establish ties with the People’s Republic of China, Dominican Republic President Danilo Medina said very simply, “we wanted to be on the side of history,” El Día reported.
It wasn’t possible, he said, for his country to progress “without having relations with the second-largest economy in the world, which is China. Those relations had to be established at some point in history, and the responsibility of deciding fell to me, and that’s what I did.”
Yesterday, Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan met with visiting Dominican Foreign Minister Miguel Vargas and handed him a letter of congratulation and greeting from President Xi Jinping. In his own comments yesterday, Medina referenced Xi’s letter, saying that his government hopes to have “a broad process of cooperation with the Chinese government that can be beneficial, as President Xi Jinping said in the letter he sent us last night, for China as well as for the Dominican Republic.”
According to El Nuevo Diario, the head of the Administrative Ministry of the Presidency, José Ramón Peralta, has already met with China’s Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen, with whom infrastructure and investment possibilities were discussed. Wang was accompanied by a delegation from the General Directorate of Foreign Investment, and International Development Agency. “Maritime and land connectivity were also discussed in the context of what is known as the Belt and Road Initiative,” the daily reported.
Fu Xinrong, permanent resident of China’s Office of Commercial Development in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, told the daily El Día that she welcomed the break with Taiwan, and thanked the country’s different sectors for believing that China “can continue to contribute to the sustainable development of the Dominican Republic through the implementation of a joint action plan of cooperation in priority areas, in the framework of South-South cooperation and guided by the China-CELAC agenda”—referring to the January 2018 meeting of the foreign ministers of China and the CELAC countries (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States).
‘Portugal Wants Port of Sines in One Belt, One Road Project,’ Says Ambassador in Macau
May 2 (EIRNS)—That was the headline appearing in several major Portuguese media yesterday on an interview given by Portugal’s Ambassador to China José Augusto Duarte to media at the consulate in Macau.
“Portugal has an unequivocal interest in being connected to this initiative, from an economic perspective,” the Ambassador said. It can help the Portuguese economy considerably, since Portugal has “a unique strategic position in Europe, with easy connectivity to the American continent and the African continent by sea, and by land to the whole continental Eurasian landmass.”
Sines is a modern deep-water port on the Atlantic, located in the center of Portugal, which the government has invited Chinese and other investors to help expand. It is already Portugal’s leading port in cargo volume, equipped to handle cargo ranging from LNG to containers, with a developed Industrial and Logistics Zone attached. In March, the government opened bidding on the key investment required for full participation of Sines in the Belt and Road: construction and upgrading of the rail line connecting the Sines/Lisbon ports to Spain’s high-speed rail system, and from there, to the line between Madrid, Spain and Yiwu, China.
Ambassador Duarte was firm when faced with the inevitable press questioning of civil liberties in China, responding that today China has “the best standard of living they have probably had in their history. No people are indifferent to material well-being. With the passage of time this may not be sufficient, but each society has to see the best timing for this.”
Official Daily of Peru Puts Its Role with China’s ‘New Silk Road’ on National Agenda
May 2 (EIRNS)—El Peruano, Peru’s official daily, published a two-part article by economist Carlos Aquino Rodriguez on April 24 & 25, which puts discussion of Peru’s potential role in China’s Belt and Road on the national agenda.
The New Silk road is not just about connectivity infrastructure, but also involves “mutual cooperation” in areas such as agriculture, exploration and exploitation of mineral resources, and emerging industries, such as biotechnology, and Ibero-America and the Caribbean are invited to participate.
As for Peru, our country can take advantage of China’s Belt and Road Initiative to improve our logistical infrastructure; use their scholarships and step up cultural exchanges, and ensure Peru’s scientists have access to the technological knowledge of China, “a nation which went from being a predominantly agrarian country to an industrial giant in the almost 40 years of economic reforms, and is now oriented to the production of high value-added technology and goods,” Aquino wrote.
He proposes that Peru’s port at Callao is “saturated,” and China, which has three of the top ten ports in the world, could help convert it into a hub. The proposed transcontinental railway is wrongly downplayed, because of supposed cost to Peru of the northern Peru-Brazil route, but Aquino argues that Peru should take advantage of the railroad technology developed by China “to unite parts of the country which have connectivity problems,” regardless of the decision on the transcontinental railway.
South Korean Logistics Firm Enters ‘Iron Silk Road’ Service
May 2 (EIRNS)—Not necessarily related to the most recent breakthroughs in diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula, but coming at a very appropriate moment, the South Korean firm CJ Logistics announced that as of May 2, it will enter international multimodal transport service between Europe and Asia called Eurasia Bridge Service (EABS), utilizing Trans-China Railway.
The transport service is carried out by two different modes of transport, CJ Logistics said in a statement today. When goods are stored in a container in China, trucks transport them to a train station. A rail freight transport service takes them to Europe, where the goods are directly delivered to a customer’s warehouse or factory.
The route on which CJ Logistics operates goes through major stations, including Chengdu, China; Lodz, Poland; Nuremberg, Germany; and Tilburg, Netherlands. The company supplies door-to-door delivery service by truck for destinations within 400 km.
In addition to its current routes, CJ Logistics plans to expand its rail freight transport. The company is going to have 52 routes from China to Europe and 74 routes from Europe to China in the future, connecting major Eurasian countries and cities.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
State Department Plans Mop-Up of ISIS in Syria, and Then Partition the Country
May 2 (EIRNS)—U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert announced the start of military operations against the strongholds of ISIS in Syria, in language that hinted at a de facto partition of Syria, RT and other media reported yesterday.
Nauert said, “The days of ISIS controlling territory and terrorizing the people of Syria are coming to an end.” She said that the U.S.-led coalition and its local partners, including the Kurdish-majority Syrian Democratic Forces, as well as Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon, would work “to secure their borders” from ISIS.
RT calls her statement “intriguing,” because the only remaining ISIS presence is near the Iraqi border, with a pocket south of Damascus, which is currently being cleared by Syrian government forces. Nauert also said that the United States will ensure a “strong and lasting footprint” in Syria so that ISIS cannot return, and the liberated populations “are not exploited by the Assad regime or its Iranian supporters,” RT quoted her as saying.
Yesterday, newly sworn-in U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was told by a reporter on his plane from Saudi Arabia to Tel Aviv, that the Saudi Foreign Ministry had said that they were ready to move in ground troops if needed into Syria, and Pompeo replied that “We need to make sure we get it right,” but the idea is “that this is not America working alone on this; it is the Gulf States working alongside us to take care of their own region,” according to the State Department transcript.
Last week the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “No Assistance for Assad Act,” or H.R. 4681. If passed by the Senate, it would mandate that any U.S. funds for recovery, reconstruction, or stabilization in Syria “Should be used only in a democratic Syria or in areas of Syria not controlled by a government led by Bashar al-Assad or associated forces.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, after a meeting with Turkish and Iranian officials in Moscow on April 28, said that U.S. statements supporting the integrity of Syria “are only words” that serve as cover for “plans to partition Syria.” Lavrov had warned earlier this year about Western plans to partition Syria.
Former Pentagon official Michael Maloof, who worked in Doug Feith’s notorious Office of Special Plans, told RT that the State Department’s language is “subterfuge,” and that the U.S. and its allies intend to occupy eastern Syria and partition the country to “use the Sunnis in East Syria and West Iraq to form a barricade to stop any Iranian influence and cut off supplies to Hezbollah.” He said that Washington’s objectives are aligned with the axis between Israel and Saudi Arabia, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hoping the U.S. will fight Iran for Israel.
Europeans Remain Duplicitous on Iranian Nuclear Agreement
May 2 (EIRNS)—Whereas all EU leaders, particularly the three powers that were part of the nuclear deal with Iran—France, United Kingdom, Germany—have all paid lip service to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), at the same time that they hint at modifications of the deal which are ostensibly necessary. The French government stressed “the need for longer-term assurances” that Iran would have to give in addition to the 2015 deal; the German government said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s allegations against Iran “will be investigated” but that “strict IAEA controls would have to be kept for some time to come.
A spokesman for the Her Majesty’s government declared: “We have never been naive about Iran and its nuclear intentions. That is why the IAEA inspection regime agreed as part of the Iran nuclear deal is one of the most extensive and robust in the history of international nuclear accords…. It remains a vitally important way of independently verifying that Iran is adhering to the agreement and that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful,” according to Reuters.
In addition to Iran, the other three signers to the JCPOA are the United States, China, and Russia.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Trump Tells Mueller To Drop the Witch Hunt—I’m Busy Solving U.S. Problems
May 2 (EIRNS)—President Trump attacked legal entrapment efforts against him today, in a tweet kicking off the morning:
“There was no collusion (it is a Hoax) and there is no Obstruction of Justice (that is a setup & trap). What there is is Negotiations going on with North Korea over Nuclear War. Negotiations going on with China over Trade Deficits. Negotiations on NAFTA, and much more. Witch hunt!”
Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller first leaked “40 Questions” he intended to ask President Trump to the media, and he then put out the rumor that he may subpoena Trump, if he doesn’t agree voluntarily to the trap. Mueller has implied that if Trump refuses to be interviewed by him, it could be construed as “obstruction of justice,” a well-known desperation charge by prosecutors when all else fails.
Meanwhile Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is also on the defensive over his continued stonewalling on delivery of the records that Congressional committees have demanded from the Justice Department for months—for which at least Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes threatened to launch impeachment proceedings against him. Rosenstein whined that he would not be “extorted” by such legitimate demands: “I can tell you that there are people who have been making threats privately and publicly against me, and I think they understand now that the Justice Department is not going to be extorted.”
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) leaders Ray McGovern and Dr. William Binney state that, after a year of investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, that by his latest demands, Robert Mueller has in effect “admitted that he has hit a dry well.” So, the Mueller “braintrust,” instead of “throwing in the towel,” is making another attempt to trick the President into helping the prosecution. Thus, the trumpeting of the New York Times’s lead story May 1 by Michael S. Schmidt, “Questions for President Show Depth of Inquiry into Russian Meddling.” Mueller’s legal team has prepared over four dozen questions for Trump “on an exhaustive array of subjects.” McGovern and Binney write this represents “Not depth, as in the earlier headline, but breadth. Deep dry well already dug.” Included are “open-ended” questions like, “What happened during Mr. Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow?” And, as the authors have shown, if there was anything there, the National Security Agency would already have it.
Jimmy Carter Confirms, U.S. ‘Bordered on Committing War Crimes’ in Southwest Asia
May 2 (EIRNS)—Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, gave a frank answer to the New York Times when asked in an interview it published April 24, if U.S. military strikes on Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen “contradicts our claim to be a peaceful nation devoted to human rights,” as Carter himself had written in his new book Faith: A Journey for All.
Carter replied, “I think sometimes we have bordered on committing war crimes. I don’t think that we adhere to a just approach to war, where we are supposed to make armed conflict a last resort, and limit our damage to other people to a minimum.
“I think our country is known around the world as perhaps the most warlike major country. China hasn’t been at war with anybody since 1979.”
President Carter, who previously met with North Korean leaders, was asked what advice he would give President Trump before his planned meeting with Kim Jong-un. Carter replied, “I’ve shared my advice with Trump’s national security advisor. The North Koreans want a binding agreement that the United States will not attack them so long as they stay at peace with their neighbors and with other countries. If they can get that, and the insurance and proof of it, then I think that they might very well give up that nuclear program,” Carter said.
SCIENCE & INFRASTRUCTURE
NASA’s Lunar Program Turned Over to the Commercial Sector
May 2 (EIRNS)—Just days after the scientific community learned that the Resource Prospector lunar lander, which was designed to assess resources at a lunar pole in anticipation of later manned missions, had been cancelled for budget reasons, the true reason was revealed. NASA released a “Request for Proposals” on April 27 for industry to provide a launch vehicle and lander to carry out a limited version of that mission. As SpaceNews describes it, the NASA lunar plan is now to “issue multiple indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity contracts” to industry under the new Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. And if there is an accident, or even just a technical glitch and delay, will there be a lunar program if the chosen company dissolves?
The article points out that the commercial landers that are under development—and behind schedule—are small and have a “limited” payload capacity. In other words, the scientific instruments that were planned originally for the Resource Prospector could end up on different landers at different times, undermining a coherent program of lunar polar exploration that NASA has planned, and that China is getting ready to carry out.
Depending upon commercial companies for a national policy for lunar exploration means throwing away the 50 years of experience, scientific and engineering knowledge and capability that this nation created, through a national space policy and space agency.
