EDITORIAL
The Stakes Behind Tuesday’s Presidential Announcement
May 7 (EIRNS)—The British intelligence-instigated attempt to “coup” President Donald Trump by impeachment or shadowy prosecutions, is being fought against more and more forcefully. Lyndon LaRouche’s movement has contributed mightily to that fight by its “Mueller Dossier.”
The British geopoliticians’ drive to force Trump out of the Presidency has now become an all-out war confrontation with Russia and China, using staged events to try to force Trump into wars if they can’t force him out. “Breakaway allies” Israel and Saudi Arabia are warmongering against Iran, Syria, Lebanon, committing genocide against Yemen; but the real targets are Russia and China.
Remember that the purpose of the fight against the British anti-Trump coup, was a New Paradigm of international cooperation of major nations, for peace and restored economic progress after the devastating City of London-Wall Street crash of 2007-08 and the constant wars of the Bush and Obama administrations. Trump’s intentions for such cooperation and rebuilding, and against such wars, was the reason for Americans to fight to keep him in office. It was the reason the British geopoliticians and “Old Europe” elites declared war on him.
Actually defeating the British coup against the President requires defeating the British war confrontation against Russia, and achieving that New Paradigm. And Americans can’t seek peace and economic revival, while tolerating the attempt to force President Trump out—to bring in a war President whom we need not name here, and a Congress trying to pass sanctions which lead to war.
In the decade since that terrible 2008 global crash and economic collapse, China has carried the torch of economic growth, and credit for new and more productive growth, almost alone. In the Belt and Road Initiative since 2013, joined by Russia, with increasing support from Japan and cooperation by India, is the New Paradigm mankind needs.
It is booming: Trade between China and the 71 nations now significantly participating in the Belt and Road, zoomed to $1.45 trillion in 2017, rising by more than 10% a year. That is more than U.S.-China trade and Western Europe-China trade combined, and almost in equal balance of imports and exports to and from China. These countries are jointly building new high-technology infrastructure, increasing the productivity of their populations.
German industrial companies, by contrast, complained bitterly to their government this week that the latest anti-Russia sanctions were causing them huge losses, and said, “The need for a political de-escalation strategy is blatantly clear. There are enough politicians who cause conflicts or take a confrontational approach. We need people to build bridges, people who have the courage to deploy their political capital for the benefit of mutual understanding.” Rare insight for Germany.
The United States, by not embracing the New Paradigm the Belt and Road represents, is facing another financial crash; and is wasting the strong relationship President Trump has with China’s President Xi Jinping, and clearly wants to have with Russia’s President Putin.
Productivity is what the American so-called “recovery” lacks; productivity and creativity in the sense of Lyndon LaRouche’s “Fourth Law” demanding a “crash program for fusion power and space.” LaRouchePAC’s pamphlet, LaRouche’s Four Laws and America’s Future on the New Silk Road, is out in a third mass-circulation edition for this purpose.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Netanyahu Admits Iran Did Not Violate Nuclear Agreement
May 7 (EIRNS)—Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu appeared somewhat incoherent yesterday, in telling reporters that “Anyone who says there is nothing new in the material we showed has not seen the material,”—but the IAEA has read the documents, and said Israel showed nothing new.
Netanyahu made the argument again, reported the New York Times: “To those arguing that the documents did not prove any Iranian violation of the accord since it came into effect in 2016, Mr. Netanyahu said that was missing the point. ‘If you don’t violate a dangerous deal, it doesn’t make it less dangerous.’ he said, adding that the accord was based on ‘a fictitious Iranian report’ to the International Atomic Energy Agency, in which Iran denied having ever planned to build a weapon.” No one could explain where Netanyahu got this analysis of the basis for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the agreement is called.
Notably, Netanyahu continues to hold it against the JCPOA, that Iran managed to retain its nuclear “know-how.” There is no way to eliminate such scientific “know-how,” of course, except by eliminating Iranian scientists, either by assassination or general war. Netanyahu’s governments have repeatedly tried the former course; now it is demanding the latter.
Netanyahu’s ministers were threatening two other nations while he was threatening threatened Iran. Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett, upon news of Hezbollah gains in Lebanon’s parliamentary election May 6, said in a Twitter statement “The results of the Lebanese elections strengthen what has been our approach for a while: Lebanon=Hezbollah. … The State of Israel will not differentiate between the sovereign state of Lebanon and Hezbollah and will view Lebanon as responsible for any action from within its territory,” said Bennett.
And no less belligerent, Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz told Ynet, “If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad continues allowing Iran to operate within Syrian territory, Israel will liquidate him and topple his regime.”
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
Russian President Putin Inaugurated; Germany’s Schröder Attends Ceremony
May 7 (EIRNS)—Russian President Vladimir Putin took office for his second consecutive six-year term today, and said that he believes the meaning of life is to do his utmost for the sake of Russia’s present and future, TASS reported. Altogether, this will be his fourth term as President.
“While assuming office as Russia’s President, I am acutely aware of my colossal responsibility to each of you, all our multiethnic people; responsibility to Russia, the country of grandiose victories and accomplishments; to millennia-old history of Russia’s statehood and our ancestors,” he said at the inaugural ceremony, describing their courage and sacred attitude toward their home country. “I believe my duty and the meaning of my entire life is doing everything for the sake of Russia; for its peaceful and prosperous present and future; for the sake of preserving and continuing our great people; for the sake of well-being in every Russian family.”
Putin continued, “As the head of state, I will do everything to multiply Russia’s strength, prosperity and glory in order to live up to the demands of the society and the hopes of the country’s citizens.” He said that Russia had gone through tough times in the 1990s and early 2000s, and that “not all wounds have been healed; not all losses and difficulties have been overcome, while life [holds] new challenges for us; new difficult tasks, and we still have to work hard to address them.”
“There is no time to spare,” Putin said. “However, we all remember well that over its more than thousand-year-long history Russia was repeatedly confronted with the times of trouble and hardships and it was always born anew, like the phoenix, reaching the heights that were unattainable for others.”
The President concluded, “We need breakthroughs in all the spheres of life. … I’m deeply convinced that such a breakthrough can be ensured only by a free society that accepts all new and advanced things, and rejects unfairness, stagnation, rigid protectionism, and bureaucratic inertia. All that constrains people and impedes them from opening themselves up and fulfilling their potential and their talents, and therefore holds back the aspiration of our entire country for the future.”
The complete transcript is available on the President’s website. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57416
Live broadcasts of the Kremlin ceremony showed former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder standing in the front row, shoulder to shoulder with the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. He was also the second person to receive a handshake from the newly-inaugurated Russian leader—coming in before Medvedev. Last year, Schröder became the chairman of Russia’s state oil company, Rosneft. He is also one of the most prominent voices in the West calling for an end to sanctions against Moscow.
Belt and Road Has Created a Trade Boom
May 7 (EIRNS)—A new report by China’s State Information Center shows that goods trade between China and countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is booming and nearly balanced.
According to Xinhua May 7, the Center reports that total trade with 71 countries considered part of the BRI was up 13.4% in 2017 over 2016, at $1.45 trillion, now doubling the total trade between the United States and China. Moreover it is nearly in balance: $666 billion equivalent in imports by China (39% of China’s total imports by value), and $775 billion in exports from China.
The rate of growth of imports by China from these 71 countries is particularly rapid, 20% a year; that of exports from China, 8.5% a year. And China’s trade with Central Asia countries grew at the fastest rate in 2017, followed by trade with Eastern Europe. So much for the wisdom peddled by MERICS, RIIA/Chatham House, etc. that the Central and Eastern European countries and Central Asian countries joining the New Silk Road are “getting little from it so far except debt.”
The Center reported China’s largest category of exports to Belt and Road countries is that of mechanical and electrical products, which is also a large category of its imports from them, along with fossil fuels. This is obviously a partial idea, but clearly it is mutually beneficial trade. The majority of the trade was by private companies on the Chinese side.
China Premier Li Keqiang in Indonesia To Strengthen Ties, Expand Trade and Investments
May 7 (EIRNS)—China’s Prime Minister Li Keqiang is in Indonesia today, ahead of his travel to Tokyo for the Japan-South Korea-China Summit on May 9.
Several deals were signed during Li’s meeting with President Joko Widodo at the Bangor Presidential Palace. China will expand its purchase of palm oil by 500,000 tons—this expands China’s palm oil imports from Indonesia to 4.23 million tons, out of the country’s 5 million tons of consumption. The Jakarta Post reports that several MOUs were signed, “including on the construction of dams in Indonesia’s Sulawesi island and South Kalimantan province on Borneo.”
A major topic of discussion is the effort to overcome delays in the construction of the high-speed rail connection between Jakarta and Bandung. China won the contract in 2015, but land acquisition has proven to be a serious problem. China is now the third-largest investor in Indonesia after Singapore and Japan, and is the leading trade partner. Indonesia is looking to China to reduce the trade deficit.
Li will also meet with ASEAN Secretary General Lim Jock Hoi. ASEAN headquarters is in Jakarta.
Zimbabwe Presidential Opposition Campaigns on Anti-China Line
May 7 (EIRNS)—The Zimbabwe opposition leader Nelson Chamisa is campaigning for the upcoming July 21-Aug. 21 elections on an anti-Chinese line. This is not surprising since on May 8 he will be the featured guest at Her Majesty’s Chatham House/Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. Chamisa had tried to say the Queen had personally invited him to London, which was immediately denied by the British Embassy in Harare.
Chamisa, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, is quoted in the Zimbabwe Mail as saying: “We have seen the deals by Ngwenya (President Emmerson Mnangagwa) and with the Chinese and others. They are busy asset stripping and looting our resources, so I said beginning September when I get into office, I will ask the Chinese to come in a queue, and interrogate their deals. We will send away all those with bad deals for Zimbabwe. We want genuine investment which will bring benefit for the people, not for the leadership only.”
The Mail however also quoted China-Africa analyst Cobus van Staden of the South African Institute of International Affairs telling Voice of America: “We’ve seen that kind of populist, anti-Chinese agitation in other African countries too. The most famous one was in Zambia a few years ago, when late President Michael Sata was campaigning under a similar kind of nationalist, anti-Chinese kind of message. But then, interestingly, after he came to power, that changed very quickly. Because I think once one is in power and one faces the reality of the investment environment and the relative influence of China in the whole world, then it becomes very difficult. That’s kind of campaign talk, I think, more than governing talk.”
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Mueller Legal Assassin Job Now Being Exposed in Courts as Well
May 7 (EIRNS)—After more than a year in which the major FBI, Justice Department, and CIA players in the “Russiagate” coup attempt against President Donald Trump have been exposed, fired or forced to resign, Robert Mueller’s own Special Counsel hit team against the President is now being exposed in the Federal courts as well. How long will Congress keep defending him?
Three Federal court events now legally threaten Mueller’s operation, beyond the political holes blown in it by LaRouchePAC’s mass-circulation dossier, “Robert Mueller Is an Amoral Legal Assassin; He Will Do His Job If You Let Him.”
The “Brady” ruling several months ago by Judge Emmet Sullivan in former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s case, remains open. Sullivan—without Flynn’s defense team requesting it—ordered additional exculpatory information be given to Flynn by Mueller’s prosecution. This, of course, would feature the FBI interview report in which agents who interrogated Flynn found no deception on his part. The report has been classified and was redacted by the DOJ from the report of the House Intelligence Committee, which had heard testimony about it. It is involved in what has now led Committee Chair Devin Nunes threatening Attorney General Sessions with contempt. Flynn’s sentencing was postponed for a second time last week.
In Alexandria’s Eastern District of Virginia, Judge T.S. Ellis challenged Mueller’s team at length, about prosecuting former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort for matters years prior to Trump’s campaign, in order to turn Manafort against the President. Ellis demanded and was promised the largely secret “scope memo” on Mueller’s investigation; what he was authorized to investigate by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Moreover, Mueller’s team arrogantly told Judge Ellis that only DOJ and Mueller could decide whether Mueller was exceeding the scope of his investigation; no court could determine that. This could be an ill-considered slap in the face to a Federal judge.
The third event was the surprising U.S. court appearance and decision to contest by a Russian-based firm indicted by Mueller along with two other firms and 13 Russian individuals in allegedly interfering in the U.S. Presidential election. This will allow discovery and also “Brady” motions for exculpatory information, which will unexpectedly force Mueller to reveal if he has any evidence.
Trump legal advisor Rudy Giuliani says the President’s legal team is now advising he ignore any subpoena from Mueller.
Sputnik International Covers Immortal Regiment March in Washington, D.C.
May 7 (EIRNS)—Sputnik International yesterday covered the “Immortal Regiment” March in Washington, D.C. on May 5, which drew more than 300 people, including people of Russian descent, their young children, and three members of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Schiller Institute. Sputnik’s headline read, “Immortal Regiment March Participants Stress Importance of U.S.-U.S.S.R. Alliance.”
In New York City, 2,000 people turned out for the Immortal Regiment March on May 5, including a good-sized delegation from the Schiller Institute. The March culminated at a rally held at Battery Park in Manhattan.
Coverage was not limited to the many Russian media; it also appeared in the Seattle Times, where “Victory Day” was also celebrated. This year is the 73rd anniversary of the victory over the Nazis in World War II, which Russians celebrate on May 9.
Washington, D.C. participants told Sputnik that the cooperation between Russia and the United States during World War II should never be forgotten, and that the alliance of the two countries should be preserved. Tim Rush of the Schiller Institute held a photo of his uncle, Al Pifer, a World War II veteran, and told Sputnik, “I am here to honor all those who fought against fascism in World War II.” Rush explained that his uncle was one of the U.S. soldiers who liberated the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, on May 5, 1945, at about the time the U.S. and Russian soldiers were meeting at the Elbe River. He further said that he came “because it is so important to identify these points of collaboration between Russia and the United States, especially today, with so much ugly denigration of Russia in the United States. I am very, very proud of what my uncle represented for the United States, Russia, and other nations to collaborate in the fight to end fascist government.”
The Washington march walked from the White House to the World War II Memorial, where participants laid flowers.
The first “Immortal Regiment” march in the United States was held in New York City on May 3, 2015.
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Prins: Crash Coming Whether Central Banks Keep Pumping, or Stop
May 7 (EIRNS)—Continuing to speak on her new book, released May 1, Collu$ion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World, banking historian Nomi Prins made her most definitive argument May 6 for a coming general financial crash. In an interview May 6 with the Greg Hunter’s “USAWatchdog.com,” Prins said that central banks’ decade of uncontrolled money printing had built in a new financial blowout whether they now slow down and raise interest rates, or not.
Their false confidence that they have their own huge debt asset inflation “under control,” is no different from the identical confidence expressed by then Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke et al. at the peak of a speculative boom in 2007.
If the Federal Reserve and other major central banks turn back toward “normal,” non-bank bailout operations, “The markets would plummet really quickly,” Prins said.
But even if they keep pumping relentlessly, “We will eventually get a crash because, at some point, the amount of quantitative easing, or conjured money to buy assets out of the market to pump up the … financial system, will come to this head, where even though these major central banks are continuing to dump money in, … there will be ruptures at the bottom of the economy. Even though they [companies and consumers] are borrowing cheap money, they just can’t make enough money to service even very cheap debt. Consumers, who are at all-time debt highs, don’t have enough to continue to service their debt.
“When these things happen at the same time in terms of lack of payments, delinquencies and defaults, then money will be taken out of the stock markets to plug the gap, and then the stock market comes down. It will start with debt disintegrating, defaulting or having delinquencies,” the author explained.
“The behavior that happens after this is the seizure of credit and lack of confidence everywhere. When the cracks start, they will get bigger and bigger faster, and that’s when we have a crash,” Prins concluded.
SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Syngenta Expanding Agricultural Research in Beijing Hub
May 7 (EIRNS)—The Wall Street Journal today reports that Syngenta AG, a Swiss company with Chinese investment participation, is building up its agro-technology hub in Beijing because China’s universities offer the largest pool of scientific talent in such things as plant gene editing. Syngenta CEO Erik Fyrwald says, “It’s just natural for us to build it up there for China, and for the world.” The Journal, however, worried that “the forefront of agricultural science could swing from the U.S. farm belt to China.”
OTHER
Another Corbyn Scare: Does EU Really Fear a Labour Government?
May 7 (EIRNS)—The Times of London runs an article today claiming that fear of a Labour Party leader coming to power in Great Britain is causing the European Union to take a hard line in the Brexit talks with the British government. While this could be just another way of attacking the Labour Party leader, it could still have an element of truth.
According to The Times the EU is concerned that a Labour Party government would return to policies of nationalization and especially granting subsidies to selective industries, which is strictly prohibited under the EU’s single market rules.
The Times quotes an unnamed EU official involved in the Brexit talks as having said: “The idea that Conservatives would legislate a race to the bottom is a myth, and no one really believes it, even if some Tories have helped create it. The real fear is state subsidies under a Jeremy Corbyn government. British policy has remained unchanged for generations but now there is a real chance of a left-wing government reversing it. We have to protect ourselves and the single market.”
Therefore, The Times wrote the EU is adopting a damage-control strategy, including a “non-regression clause,” which would incorporate Margaret Thatcher’s privatization and free market policies into the Brexit deal! This would even include a mechanism to slap Britain with hard trade tariffs, compensation fees and measures to restrict Britain’s air traffic should the U.K. pursue a policy that subsidizes industries!
If all of this true, the real fear is not competition from Great Britain but the influence Corbyn could have inside the EU itself, where many disillusioned Social Democrats, especially in Germany, are looking towards his policies as an alternative to the sell-out policies of the Social Democratic leaderships.
