EDITORIAL
Putin’s Austrian Hosts Attest, ‘Russia Is an Important Part of Europe’
June 5 (EIRNS)—There are reasons for optimism. Despite the terrible toll of destruction underway in Yemen, Gaza, Syria, and elsewhere in Asia and other points victimized by British geopolitically-stoked strife, developments are occurring, which give grounds for hope and action. Three events stand out.
In Europe today, Russian President Vladimir Putin was received for a state visit to Austria, where the theme of dialogue was struck, going against all the British dirty operations to date, aimed at demonizing Putin and his nation. Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen said in welcome, “Russia is definitely an important part of Europe.” Moreover, as of July 1, Austria will take up the rotating chairmanship of the European Union for six months. On sanctions, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said, they won’t buck Brussels on the EU’s current policy of anti-Russian sanctions. But Austrian leaders have indicated they will move to downsize Brussels, i.e. get a large cohort of European Commission bureaucrats fired!
President Putin said on sanctions, that the measures are “harmful for everyone—those who initiated them, and those who are targetted by them.” Today Gazprom and Austria’s OMV signed an extension until 2040, of their original 50-year-old agreement for natural gas supplies from Russia to Austria. When media pestered Kurz on why Austria isn’t buying U.S. LNG, he pointed out that it’s three times more expensive.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche observed today, that more of Europe is moving towards Russia, though sometimes for the wrong reasons—namely because they can’t deal with the United States. Meantime, the NATO confrontationists continue their provocations. This week, NATO’s Operation Saber has 18,000 troops in a military exercise in the Baltics to practice defense against alleged potential “Russian aggression.”
What people need to understand, to make the whole picture come into focus, is the British (dying) Empire factor in all this, especially behind the coup attempt against the American Presidency. Of significance for this, is the article which was posted yesterday on the site of the Russian state-connected Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) think tank. Titled, “No More Doubt: It’s the U.K., Not Russia, That Meddled in the U.S. Elections,” by Harley Schlanger, identified as Vice President of the Schiller Institute USA, and National Spokesman for Lyndon LaRouche. The RIAC’s Board of Trustees includes Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Andrei Fursenko, Aide to President Putin.
The Schlanger article states, “From the beginning, the LaRouche movement in the United States has reported that there was no Russian meddling or Trump collusion, but a joint effort by U.S. and British intelligence agencies to defeat Trump, or remove him once he was elected.” He concludes, “That Trump might bring the U.S. into a full collaboration with the emerging New Paradigm, led by China and Russia, generated the hysterical response to his election, and the fiction known as Russiagate. It is this which completes the picture, and makes clear why this regime change operation against Trump must be shut down.”
Putin made reference to the consequences of the induced turmoil in the U.S. in a lengthy interview June 4 with Austria’s ORF TV network. In response to a pushy question about what is taking so long for a Trump-Putin meeting, Putin said, “As for personal meetings, I think that the possibility of these meetings depends to a large extent on the internal political situation in the United States.” Putin reviewed specific areas in which there is work going on between the two nations, saying “I hope that some day this work in the interests of the United States and Russia, indeed in the interests of the whole world, will begin, including between us personally.”
Thirdly, developments are moving ahead for the Korean Peninsula. The White House said last night that on June 12 in Singapore, the first meeting will start at 9 a.m., between Chairman Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump. U.S. and D.P.R.K. officials have had their fifth session on preparations, held this time in the DMZ. This morning, Trump tweeted, “Meeting in Singapore with North Korea will hopefully be the start of something big…we will soon see!”
These events-of-the-day show that there are solutions in the world, and also indicate that they come in relation to the dynamic underway between Russia and China, where, along with India, the area accounts for nearly 3 billions of the world’s people. If we further the collaboration, and defeat the coup operation in the United States, optimism will be rewarded. There is just vengeance. Helga Zepp-LaRouche noted again today, “The principle of the Erinyes, and Ibykus is at work.”
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
European Central Bank Cut Italian Bond Purchases During Crisis in Rome
June 5 (EIRNS)—Apparently, the ECB helped the markets to speculate against Italy at the end of May, to sabotage the formation of the new government. The original Financial Times report is backed by a chart showing a plunge in ECB purchases of Italian bonds in May. This means that it was the missing support by the ECB that determined a collapse in bond prices, which was then used as part of the tactics to block the Conte government.
The ECB’s official explanation is that this was “purely linked to practical issues such as the need for the bank to reinvest in German bonds after a chunk of its holdings matured,” the Financial Timesreports. Lega economic spokesman Claudio Borghi replied, “Since [ECB President Mario] Draghi promised to do ‘whatever it takes,’ the biggest player in the Italian bonds market has been the ECB—and they fix the price. It is not general markets that have the greatest influence on the price; the ECB is by far the biggest factor.”
Also, “The central bank has the ability to space out the asset purchases needed to cover the redemptions over different months if they feel its buying will have an outsize influence on the market,” MarketWatch comments.
“The ECB has always shown flexibility in applying capital keys on a monthly basis and May was no exception,” said Chiara Cremonesi, fixed income strategist for UniCredit. “The ECB’s QE and its application intend to be as neutral as possible and are not linked to any country-specific issue.”
M5S Deputy Laura Castelli told the Huffington Post Italia that “quantitative easing is being weakened at exactly the moment when we need it strengthened to secure the stability of the EU.”
Canada and Mexico Draw More Lines Against U.S. Trade, as Trump Eyes ‘Different Approach’
June 5 (EIRNS)—Larry Kudlow, the economic adviser to President Donald Trump, said today that the U.S. seeks to negotiate separately with Canada and Mexico on trade questions. Speaking on Fox News this morning, Kudlow said that the President told him yesterday that he is interested in having this happen very soon.
In the last few days, Mexico and Canada have drawn new lines against trade with the U.S., in retaliation for the U.S. announcement last week that the Trump Administration will impose tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from Canada and Mexico. This also comes after nine rounds of NAFTA re-negotiation went nowhere.
The North America free trade bloc, NAFTA, is bound to be in a mess, since the cross-border supply or “value” chains were fostered to serve Wall Street/City of London interests in rake-off, debt and speculation, not the common good of the three nations involved.
Trump has called the question on NAFTA, meaning on the economy of the nations of North America, but with no policy team in action for any solution. The content of the LaRouche Four Laws is exactly what is urgently required.
Canada has announced a list of U.S. trade goods worth $16 billion—the same amount as the U.S. metals trade—on which they will put tariffs as of July 1. These include such things as orange juice, paper products, dishwasher soap, domestic appliances, yogurt.
Mexico has announced many actions, e.g., tariffs of 20% on certain pork products, while those same foods imported from outside the U.S. will be duty free. Mexico intends to file an action in the World Trade Organization against the U.S., over its newly hiked steel and aluminum import tariffs.
Kudlow said that Trump “will try a different approach” than the NAFTA trilateral talks. He went on: “I can’t offer timing here, but judging from what he told us yesterday, I think he would like to start that approach rather quickly actually.”
Professor Geraci Explains How ‘China Can Help Italy in Africa’
June 5 (EIRNS)—In an interview with Radio Radicale on May 28, Professor Michele Geraci has reported that both Lega leader Matteo Salvini and M5S co-founder Beppe Grillo have asked for his advice and shown interest in different aspects of Chinese policy. Salvini is more concerned with what Geraci calls “the five pillars” of Chinese development, whereas Grillo is more interested in rural development.
“I’ve been suggesting, for some time now, cooperation with third parties in Africa, where China is investing and where I think Italy should be part of the system; other countries are already doing it.”
In an article posted on his website yesterday, Geraci explains that “China can help Italy in Africa. Today, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is in Sicily to visit secure centers for refugees, in order to understand what kind of initiatives the government should implement and carry on in the next months. How can we stabilize migratory flows from Africa? China, I think represents one possible solution, perhaps one of the few ones.
“One of the five fundamental pillars of the Chinese economic success (GDP growth of 9.5% per year for 40 consecutive years, unprecedented in the history of mankind) is a model based on a) building infrastructure and urbanization; b) welcoming migrants.
“China is trying to stabilize the economic situation in Africa, not because it is Santa Claus, but because it has economic interests. Since China started investing in Africa over the past 15 years, the poverty rate in the continent has started to decrease from 50% to about 40%.
“In fact today, China is the only country in the world, which is able to simultaneously mobilize capital and human resources, raw materials and even know-how. In other words, China has greater knowledge than any other country in the world on how to manage 1 billion people, on how to manage the migration of 1 billion people, on how to manage urbanization for 1 billion people. If we are lucky, China might be able to replicate its successful model in Africa as well. Italy can play an active role alongside China in Africa, helping China to ‘help people in their own countries,’ which is not a slogan but the reality of this new, globalized world.
“Western countries by using, what I call, the Bob Geldof model based on charity, didn’t bring significant benefits to African countries, where poverty has increased, whereas, in China, it has decreased by 800 million people. These statistics are factual and prove that we shouldn’t really have any superiority complex vis-à-vis China.”
U.S. POLITICAL & ECONOMIC
Obama Rejected North Korean Offer for Denuclearization Talks in 2013
June 5 (EIRNS)—Joel Wit, the State Department official who formulated and then administered the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea, and now runs the “38 North” website, reports in an editorial there today that North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un in 2013 offered to hold talks with the U.S. on denuclearization, similar to his offer this year which Trump has accepted. Wit, who was engaged in those talks in 2013, writes: “Those meetings happened five years ago, but they took place at the very beginning stages of the nuclear strategy Kim is executing to such dramatic effect now. At the time, Kim Jong-un had just enshrined his byungjin policy, stating that the North intended to develop a nuclear arsenal as a shield behind which it could modernize its economy. North Korean officials explained in these private sessions that Kim had issued the new policy after concluding that his country needed more nuclear weapons to deter the United States…. The North Koreans also felt Washington and Seoul thought they could bully the North during the leadership transition that had begun with the death of Kim Jong-il in December 2011. One North Korean official I spoke to then said nuclear equaled survival.
“But other officials said that was only under present circumstances, and their approach could change if the tense relationship between the United States and North Korea improved. That might explain a puzzling move by the North in June 2013, when the National Defense Commission—the top government body in Pyongyang chaired by Kim—issued an important new pronouncement that it was open to negotiations on denuclearization. The Obama administration dismissed it at the time as propaganda.”
Wit does not mention it, but Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the time were implementing the “pivot to Asia,” the nuclear-armed ring around China and Russia in Asia, and were clearly not interested in losing the North Korea “excuse” for implementing this policy. Obama called it “strategic patience”—doing nothing while North Korea built the bomb.
Wit also writes that the officials he spoke with in North Korea insisted that the offer came from Kim Jong-un, and that he was totally serious about denuclearization and improving relations with the U.S. Kim had reached an agreement in 2012 with the Obama Administration to end nuclear weapons tests and long-range missile tests, but when North Korea launched a satellite, Obama claimed the deal meant they could not have a space program either, and scrapped the deal.
The North Korean demands in 2013 were essentially the same as today, Wit says—end the hostile policy against North Korea, including all the political, economic and strategic aspects of that policy.
Wit is rather optimistic about Trump’s chances. He concludes that “the Trump administration doesn’t necessarily endorse [National Security Advisor John] Bolton’s view” (the Libya model, of giving over everything before any U.S. concessions kick in), while, Wit continues, “Susan Thornton, the Acting Assistant Secretary of State in charge of Asia, said last week that it was obvious there would be multiple steps in a long process of denuclearization, and the key issue was what happened first.”
Senate Democratic Leaders Out To Sink North Korea Deal
June 5 (EIRNS)—Seven of the top Democrats in the Senate sent President Trump a letter on June 4 threatening that they intend to torpedo any deal reached with North Korea which does not meet their “conditions,” and they will do so through sanctions. This neo-con initiative follows the modus operandi of how Congress—there in bipartisan agreement—threw the monkey wrench of CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) requiring sanctions on Russia, into the President’s efforts to put Russia-U.S. relations on a sound and friendly footing.
Led by Robert Menendez and signed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Mark Warner, Dianne Feinstein, Patrick Leahy and Sherrod Brown, the letter demands the administration involve Congress “throughout the diplomatic process” towards a deal. Any agreement reached must meet five conditions, they write, asserting that “Congress must act as a check on any agreement that does not live up to these principles by imposing tougher sanctions and oversight.”
Their “conditions” include that any agreement assures the permanent dismantling of all North Korea’s biological and chemical weapons programs, as well as its nuclear program (including enrichment), of its ballistic missile program (including space launches), and address “North Korea’s extensive military arsenal” generally. “Anywhere, anytime inspections and snap-back sanctions if North Korea is not in full compliance” must be specified in any agreement.
Oh, and by the way, they add, “we urge you to maintain a tough approach to China” during these negotiations, to ensure it, too, plays ball.
Russia’s RIAC Runs Schiller Institute Analysis Naming Britain as U.S. Elections Meddler
June 5 (EIRNS)—“No More Doubt: It’s the U.K., Not Russia, that Meddled in the U.S. Elections,” reads the headline on the article posted yesterday in the Experts Column on the front page of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) website. The author is Harley Schlanger, duly identified as “Vice President of the Schiller Institute USA” and “National Spokesman for Lyndon LaRouche.”
This is no small message delivered by the Russians. RIAC is Russia’s premier academic and diplomatic thinktank, founded in 2010 pursuant to a presidential decree mandating creation of an institution to interface “between the state, scholarly community, business, and civil society in an effort to find foreign policy solutions to complex conflict issues.” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov leads its 14-member Board of Trustees, which range from the head of the International Affairs Committee of the Federation Council (the upper house of the national legislature), to Sherbank’s president, the president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, the rector of the Foreign Ministry’s Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University), an aide to President Putin, and others.
“The transformation of Russiagate into Spygate, underscores that it was the United Kingdom, through its various intelligence units that ‘meddled’ in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections,” Schlanger wrote. “Enough facts have now emerged, that it can be stated definitively, that there was a joint operation by Anglo-American intelligence, designed to entrap Trump campaign officials, through a classic ‘sting’ operation.” The kind of “entrapment” operation, he points out, which “has been used repeatedly by the FBI, against both ‘left’ and ‘right’ oppositionists,” from the civil rights movement, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to the anti-war movement in the late 1960s-early 1970s, the Ku Klux Klan, labor officials and pro-labor Congress members, “and, more recently, with FBI plants into alleged terror cells since 9/11.”
“From the beginning, the LaRouche movement in the United States has reported that there was no Russian meddling or Trump collusion, but a joint effort by U.S. and British intelligence agencies to defeat Trump, or remove him once he was elected,” Schlanger pointed out.
After reviewing some of the now-exposed details of this operation, e.g., the roles of furiously-anti-Russian, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Schlanger identifies the strategic intent of its British authors: “That Trump might bring the U.S. into a full collaboration with the emerging New Paradigm, led by China and Russia, generated the hysterical response to his election and the fiction known as Russiagate. It is this which completes the picture, and makes clear why this regime change operation against Trump must be shut down,” he concludes.
‘Acute Political Struggle’ in U.S. Is Delaying Meeting with Trump, Putin Tells Austrian TV
June 5 (EIRNS)—Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a lengthy TV interview to Austria’s ORF news service yesterday, on the eve of his visit to Vienna today. ORF anchor Armin Wolf asked the questions, one of which was, “Why is it taking so long” for there to be a meeting between President Donald Trump and Putin? The President replied, according to the translated transcript on the Kremlin website:
“You should ask our colleagues in the United States. In my opinion, this is the result of the ongoing acute political struggle in the United States. Indeed, Donald Trump and I have, firstly, met more than once at various international venues and secondly, we regularly talk over the phone. Our foreign affairs departments and special services are working fairly well together in areas of mutual interest, above all in the fight against international terrorism. This work is ongoing.
“As for personal meetings, I think that the possibility of these meetings depends to a large extent on the internal political situation in the United States. The Congressional election campaign is getting under way and then there will be the next presidential election [in 2020], and the President of the United States is coming under attack over various matters. I think this is the main reason.
“In a recent telephone conversation, Donald said he was worried about the possibility of a new arms race. I fully agree with him. However, to prevent a possible arms race (we did not initiate such a course of events, we did not withdraw from the Anti-Missile Defense [ABM] Treaty, we merely responded to the threats that arise for us from this, but I agree with the U.S. President), we should think about it, we should do something about it, give corresponding instructions to our Foreign Ministry and the U.S. State Department. The experts should start working in a concrete way. I hope that some day this work in the interests of the United States and Russia, indeed in the interests of the whole world will begin, including between us personally.”
NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
Chinese Companies Plan To Invest $10 Billion in Peru over Next Three Years
June 5 (EIRNS)—So announced China’s Ambassador to Peru Jia Guide on June 1 during a ceremony with President Martin Vizcarra launching the expansion of the Toromocho copper works which Aluminum Corp. of China (Chinalco) will be carrying out over the next two years. Ambassador Jia located the “deepening” of the strategic association between China and Peru, through cooperation between Presidents Vizcarra and Xi Jinping, as “an expansion of the new strategy of the Belt and Road Initiative.”
The $1.3 billion-plus investment which Chinalco is making at Toromocho is the first Chinese-Peruvian mega-project signed since President Vizcarra took office in March, and shows “the vote of confidence by Chinese companies” in Peru, the Ambassador said, according to the extensive report published in the official daily El Peruano.
When completed in 2020, the planned 45% increase in annual copper production at Toromocho will generate 9,000 direct and indirect jobs. President Vizcarra said the increased tax income generated will be used to finance education, health, and sanitation improvements.
Among the other important projects contracted or under discussion with Chinese companies is a new port for a mineral company at Chancay, on the Pacific Coast 36 miles north of Lima, which COSCO Shipping Holdings will build and operate, and discussion that China Harbour Engineering Company will take charge of the expansion of the port of Ilo, the port chosen as the terminus of the central transcontinental route passing through Bolivia, should that get off the ground.
SCIENCE & INFRASTRUCTURE
China’s Education Ministry Approves 2,311 New Science Majors for College Freshmen
June 5 (EIRNS)—China has created 2,311 new science majors for incoming freshmen to choose from, spread around colleges and universities throughout the country. Global Times reports that the intention is to “narrow China’s talent gap in high-tech fields, experts said.” The Ministry of Education approved the plan in March, focused on data science, robotic engineering, artificial intelligence (AI), and cyber-security.
“The country is experiencing a technological transformation, and the new majors echo the trend,” Xie Zuoxu, an education professor at Xiamen University, told the Global Times yesterday.
The science education expansion in this way corresponds to the “Made in China 2025” program for China to develop domestic industries and provide the technologies for which they still depend on foreign imports, such as some advanced semiconductors.
West China City Daily reported that a “talent gap of 1.5 million exists in fields such as big data, AI and cloud computing. That could soar to 9.5 million by 2050.”
Xie told Global Times: “Taking Xiamen University as an example, six big data research institutes in different fields including healthcare, material and higher education have been established in the past years, but talent is still urgently needed.”
About 9.75 million high school seniors will take China’s college entrance examinations this week, according to Global Times.
