EDITORIAL
BRICS: Creating a New Paradigm for World Development—Will the West Join?
July 25 (EIRNS)—A demonstration of the accelerating emergence of a new world order is taking place in South Africa today, where the leaders of the five BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa—are holding their tenth annual Summit beginning today and continuing through Friday. Also attending are the heads of state from Indonesia, Turkey, Argentina, and a large number of African nations, as part of the “BRICS Plus.” The African leaders will also attend a BRICS Africa Outreach Summit.
Kesha Rogers, the LaRouchePAC-supported independent candidate for Congress from the 9th Congressional District in Houston, Texas, observed today that there are strong similarities between the economic challenges facing Africa, which are a primary subject on the BRICS Summit agenda, and those facing Houston, Texas, and much of the United States. Despite the vast difference between the historic development in the United States economy and the historic lack of development in Africa, the fact is that Houston was devastated by Hurricane Harvey in August 2017 primarily due to the severe lack of infrastructure to deal with the inevitable storms which strike the region regularly. Beyond that, she stated, much of the damage from that storm has yet to be repaired, while the dire necessity to build new infrastructure to prepare for the new hurricane season which is now arriving remains at best ideas on paper. Rogers will call on Americans, and especially African-Americans across the country, to join her in demanding that the U.S. learn from the model of the BRICS approach to the transformation of Africa, through vast infrastructure development in the spirit of the New Silk Road.
President Donald Trump has dedicated himself to restoring and expanding the decayed U.S. infrastructure. Following his “peacemaker” summits with Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin over the past year, there is every reason to believe that he could achieve that goal, with the support of the American people, by joining with the BRICS, and with the new financial institutions such as the BRICS’ New Development Bank and the China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, bringing the New Silk Road into the United states. This process would also provide U.S. industry with huge new opportunities to join with China, Japan and others in the explosive development now beginning to transform Africa, Ibero-America, and Asia.
Listen to the words of Xi Jinping, addressing the BRICS Business Forum today:
“We should pursue innovation and seize development opportunities. Science and technology, as the primary production forces, have provided inexhaustible power driving progress of human civilization. Humanity had made giant leaps forward as it progressed from an agricultural civilization to an industrial civilization, a process which created both huge gains in social productivity and growing pains. The world today has once again reached a critical historic juncture. In the unfolding new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, new things will inevitably emerge and take the place of old ones. Indeed, this will be a difficult and painful process. But if countries succeed in seizing opportunities that have presented themselves, they will be able to achieve new dynamic growth and deliver better lives to their people.
“In the face of new opportunities brought by new science and technology, every country has an equal right to development. Those who fail to keep abreast of the trend of the times will fall behind and become irrelevant. What we can and should do is to seize opportunities, increase input in innovation, focus on creating new areas of growth and replace old growth drivers with new ones.
“Home to more developing countries than any other continent, Africa has more development potential than any other region in the world. We should strengthen cooperation with Africa, support its development and make BRICS-Africa cooperation a model for South-South cooperation. We should actively carry out cooperation with African countries in such areas as poverty reduction, food security, innovation, infrastructure development and industrialization in a way compatible with their national conditions.”
The Schiller Institute has now released the totally new 440-page Volume 2 of the ground-breaking Special Report from 2014, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge.” The new report, subtitled “A Shared Future for Humanity,” covers the incredible worldwide developments of these past four years, while proposing a model for the development of the world and beyond for the next fifty years based on the principles of physical economy developed by Lyndon LaRouche. It can be purchased from the Schiller Institute: https://schillerinstitute.nationbuilder.com/wlb_ii
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Mueller Can’t Count on Docile Public Anymore To Sell His Farcical Probe
July 25 (EIRNS)—George Neumayr, who has written frequently in the American Spectator, exposing the true nature of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, penned another article July 24 pointing out that with the revelations about the “flimsy FISA warrant,” Mueller’s investigation is going down the tubes.
He might have once counted on a docile public, but “not anymore,” Neumayr writes. “The rise of Trump has exposed Washington’s entitled frauds, whose hurled boomerangs now fly back at them…. A public fed up with phony FISA warrants and partisanship that masquerades as professionalism will not see Trump as the villain in this sorry tale, but its victim.”
He should have mentioned that it was less “the rise of Trump,” and more the crucial role that LaRouchePAC and Executive Intelligence Review played in exposing the real British intelligence roots of the anti-Trump coup. The “farcical FISA warrant is one more withered branch on Mueller’s poisoned tree,” Neumayr asserts, referring to the FBI’s request for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant against Carter Page, based on a lying dossier by a British MI6 agent, paid for by the Clinton campaign.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, is the “careerist weasel … the Dr. Frankenstein in this political horror show, [who] created a monster in Mueller and that monster is now rampaging through Manhattan, looking for the black books of madams….” Mueller is nothing but a “garden-variety abusive prosecutor, whom Rosenstein hired to give official Washington what it wanted, an unfolding coup against a reviled outsider. As the ruling class’s battering ram against Trump, Mueller is working feverishly to magnify Trump’s political mistakes into quasi-impeachable offenses. But that tack won’t work. The tree Mueller is plucking, weakened by too much poison in its roots, will collapse in the end on top of him,” Neumayr concludes.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Pentagon Standing By for Possible White House Orders To Adjust Mission in Syria
July 25 (EIRNS)—Secretary of Defense James Mattis told reporters yesterday that, so far, the Pentagon has not received any orders to do anything different in Syria as a result of the July 16 summit in Helsinki between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. At this point, the U.S. military in Syria is only engaged in “deconfliction” with the Russians in order to avoid any conflict.
However, and importantly, Mattis further said: “But we will not be doing anything additional until the Secretary of State and the President have further figured out at what point we are going to start working alongside our allies with Russia in the future. That has not happened yet and it would be premature for me to go into any more detail at this point, because we’re not doing any more than this.”
His remarks are in contrast to the comments made by Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Central Command, who indicated in a number of venues since Monday that he would not recommend expanding U.S. military engagement with the Russians beyond the deconfliction line.
Mattis was speaking on the occasion of a 2+2 meeting involving himself and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and their Australian counterparts, held in Palo Alto, California.
ECONOMY
Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn Launches ‘Build It in Britain’ Push for Reindustrialization
July 25 (EIRNS)—Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn launched his party’s “Build It in Britain” reindustrialization campaign in a speech to business leaders in Birmingham yesterday. Although he denied it, Corbyn sounded a little like Donald Trump—Labour Party style—including a big attack on the City of London. He accused the Conservative Party of continuing to do as they always have—“kowtowing and skewing policy to the narrowest interests the City of London while ignoring the needs of the vast majority in their bungled Brexit negotiations….”
Slamming the economic policy of the last 40 years as a “kind of magical thinking” in which “We’ve been told that it’s good, even advanced, for our country to manufacture less and less and to rely instead on cheap labor abroad to produce imports while we focus on the City of London and the financial sector.” The banking crash exposed the weakness of that policy, he said.
Denying he was pursuing protectionist or nationalist policy, he said: “It’s not economic nationalism, it’s good sense to invest in the skills that we’ve already got here and to improve those skills for the future,” according to the Guardian. “Nobody’s ever said I have something in common with Donald Trump before. It’s news to both of us, I suspect.”
He said a Labour government would ensure the state used “more of its own money to buy here in Britain.”
“The state spends over £200 billion per year in the private sector. That spending power alone gives us levers to stimulate industry, to encourage business to act in people’s interests by encouraging genuine enterprise, fairness, cutting-edge investment, high-quality service and doing right by communities.
“But to ensure prosperity here, we must be supporting our industries, making sure that where possible the government is backing our industries and not merely overseeing their decline.”
He was critical of the fact that the government outsourced the production of British Naval vessels to other countries, U.K. passports to a Franco-Dutch company, and the fact that much of the rail rolling stock used in the U.K. is imported. “We have plenty of capacity to build train carriages in the U.K. and yet repeatedly over recent years these contracts have been farmed out abroad, costing our economy crucial investment, jobs for workers and tax revenues,” he said.
Labour would also reduce the number of government contracts outsourced to private companies, “ending the racket of outsourcing that has turned our public services into a cash cow for the few.”
On Brexit he said that for many the referendum vote had been “a cry from people saying they felt left behind in many of their communities.”
“Are we promoting economic nationalism? No, what we’re promoting is an investment in manufacturing in this country.”
In the full speech, available on the Labour List website, Corbyn laid out a three-prong strategy that would include new government procurement rules so that government supports jobs and industry; investing in infrastructure to support companies in Britain to keep goods flowing efficiently and costs low; increasing investment in education, skills and lifelong learning, through creating a National Education Service; and programs to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through founding a national investment bank and a network of regional development banks.
Corbyn pointed out that between 1970 and 2007, the financial sector output grew from 5% to 15% of total economic output, while manufacturing decreased from 32% to 12%. To rebalance the economy, they will work to get the “dirty money out of the City of London” and “shift taxation to disincentivize financial speculation, for example with our financial transaction tax.”
He slammed Prime Minister Theresa May’s handling of Brexit, saying “Never before has a prime minister discarded the interests of the country so recklessly in favor of the interests of their own party or their own self-preservation.” He said the U.K. should have a customs union with the EU. “It’s not often that the Labour Party and the Institute of Directors, the CBI [Confederation of British Industry] and the TUC [Trade Unions Confederation] agree—we need to negotiate a new customs union,” he said.
Trump and Juncker Reach Some Agreement on Trade, but Attack China
July 25 (EIRNS)—President Trump met today with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström in the Oval Office, which was followed by a joint press appearance in the Rose Garden. Trump said that they had agreed to “work together towards zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers, and zero subsidies on non-auto industrial goods.”
The EU has agreed to buy liquefied natural gas and soy beans from the U.S., but no figures were reported.
In an open slap at China, Trump said that the U.S. and the EU would work together to “address unfair trade practices, including: intellectual property theft; forced technology transfer; industrial subsidies; and distortions created by state owned enterprises and over capacity.” These are, of course, the accusations launched repeatedly against China by the free-trade moguls.
Trump stated that the agreement would “resolve the steel and aluminum tariff issues … and retaliatory tariffs,” without spelling out how that would be done. A “working group” was to be set up to resolve such issues.
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
Lavrov in Ubuntu: BRICS Is a Global Stabilizing Factor and Focus on Africa Is Key
July 25 (EIRNS)—In an article published today in South Africa’s Ubuntu magazine, on the first day of the July 25-27 BRICS summit in Johannesburg, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed the symbolism of the BRICS returning to Africa in 2018, on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nelson Mandela, “a prominent political and public figure on a global scale.” Mandela contributed personally to establishing friendly relations between South Africa and Russia, he recalled, making possible today’s “high level of a comprehensive strategic partnership.”
Lavrov particularly praised South Africa’s leadership in the BRICS, and the “special attention paid by Pretoria to Africa-related issues,” an issue he said has become especially important for Russia’s foreign policy. “We support further strengthening of the sovereignty of African countries, their independent choice of the way of development while preserving national distinctiveness.”
Of special importance, Lavrov wrote, is the fact that BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa—will foster cooperation with other integration associations and consolidate positions in international organizations to present a “united front.” The invitation to Argentina, Indonesia and Turkey, plus other African nations, to attend the July 25-27 summit reflects the BRICS Plus initiative, he explained. “Thus we will expand the global reach of the group and establish an outer circle of like-minded countries. In this regard, BRICS has good potential to become a unique platform for linking various integration processes in a flexible way.” Coordination between BRICS and other major international organizations is crucial, Lavrov underscored, since consolidation of efforts “is a key to ensuring world stability and a way to settle serious conflicts.”
He particularly referenced how the BRICS-Africa Partnership has advanced since 2013, when South Africa last chaired the BRICS. At the current summit, “a special outreach session will be held with the participation of the heads of state presiding over regional organizations of the continent in order to focus on its most relevant issues,” he said.
BRICS Plus Is ‘Creating a New Platform for Cooperation’ Internationally
July 25 (EIRNS)—Under the title, “BRICS Plus Model Can Unite Developing Countries,” He Wenping from China’s Charhar Institute (she addressed the Nov. 25-26, 2017 Schiller Institute conference in Bad Soden, Germany), and Hisham Abu Bakr Metwally from Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Industry, report in the July 24 Global Times that the concept of “BRICS Plus,” first launched by China at the BRICS Summit of 2017 in Xiamen, is a concept “to open a gateway to other countries and regions” in order to “create a new platform for cooperation among countries across different continents.” This year, the heads of state or government were invited from Argentina, Turkey, Indonesia, Egypt, and Jamaica; and from Africa, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda, Gabon, Burundi, Ethiopia, Togo, Angola. Every country this year holds the rotating chairmanship of a multilateral or regional nations grouping, such as the AU (Rwanda), or the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (Turkey).
The BRICS Plus will “extend the use of national currencies to overseas investments and bilateral and multilateral trade, thus reducing the dependency on the U.S. dollar.”
The two scholars call for Egypt and other nations to participate in the BRICS Plus, and perhaps eventually become full members.
BRICS Could Be an Alternative Model of Development to Western Dominance
July 25 (EIRNS)—In a July 25 article published on the website of the Valdai Discussion Club, entitled “BRICS and the World Order,” Georgy Toloraya suggests that the current BRICS grouping, plus other nations the “BRICS Plus” structure of other invited heads of state and government, could offer the world “an alternative model of socio-economic development, differing from that of the West” which is based on “mechanisms of a liberal market or profit gaining … that assumes the dominance of the West.”
Toloraya is the Executive Director of the Russian National Committee for BRICS Research.
He debunks “skeptics’ ” arguments that the BRICS is just a “China-centered structure,” intended only to promote China’s interests or its Belt and Road Initiative. These accusations, he notes, “are very sly statements. The Chinese factor is only one of the BRICS development facets.”
In today’s “turbulent global situation,” Toloraya continues, it is especially important that the BRICS “common denominator” should grow. Why? In contrast to the G7, BRICS expresses a “touching unanimity, which is not faked. This is not a ‘mutiny on the ship’ we see with the G7, when the captain led to one direction while the crew wants to go to another one.” By the time Russia takes over the chairmanship of the group in 2020, he writes, the BRICS “could become a united center of the multipolar world…. Now BRICS creates its own structure of global governance, and it must develop in that direction. I do not know whether that could be accomplished in the context of growing counteraction from the West, but we have to keep working.”
Because the BRICS is a global organization, Toloraya concludes, “these five leading ascendant powers could create a world order that will be more just and balanced than what we see now.” It may not expand yet, but “what we see in the BRICS Plus format, which is involving the largest countries that are not the group’s members, but show interest in it, is a significant step towards increasing the BRICS value and making this union a representative of the greater part of humanity.” On the eve of the July 25-27 Johannesburg summit, he concludes, “BRICS is not ‘against,’ but ‘for’: for just economic development conditions, for sustainable development concept to be centered on human beings….”
SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
High-Temperature Nuclear Reactors Could Recover Rare Minerals, Anticipates Fusion Torch
July 25 (EIRNS)—A four-year study by the International Atomic Energy Agency has concluded that there is potential to use modular high-temperature nuclear reactors (HTR), that are designed to produce both electricity and heat, to recover rare minerals from “unconventional” sources. As an example, they found that it would be economically viable to extract uranium as a byproduct of primary ore processing. The study was carried out by 17 institutes from 16 IAEA member nations.
They consider the criterion for development what they call “energy neutrality,” which is that the energy produced by the uranium is equal or greater than the energy required for primary ore processing, uranium processing, conversion, enrichment, and fuel production. The study concludes that the HTR application can meet that criterion.
Although a number of countries have researched HTRs—notably Germany and the U.S.—only two research reactors are in operation, in Japan and China. China is now building a prototype for a full-scale operating pebble bed high-temperature reactor.
The high-temperature application from an advanced fission reactor for minerals processing would be a predecessor of the fusion torch, whose heat would come from thermonuclear fusion energy.
Mars Express Radar Indicates a Liquid Lake Under the South Pole
July 25 (EIRNS)—It has been known from earlier measurements by spacecraft, including the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter, that there is water ice at the poles of Mars. NASA’s Phoenix lander melted some ice from the heat of its engine when it landed in the Martian Arctic. But now, after analyzing data collected by the Mars Express orbiter over the past 15 years, scientists have come to the stunning conclusion that there is liquid water underneath the South Pole of the planet.
Creating new analytical techniques, using the data from the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding Instrument, or MARSIS, scientists determined that the timing and strength of the reflected radar signal were indicative of water-rich sediments. Principal investigator of the MARSIS experiment, Roberto Orosei, said, “This is just one small study area; it is an exciting prospect to think there could be more of these underground pockets of water elsewhere, yet to be discovered.” ESA’s press release on the discovery likens it to Lake Vostok, discovered 4 km underneath the ice in Antarctica, where certain forms of life thrive.
Last week data were released revealing that there are organic molecules on Mars. And there will be an armada of spacecraft heading to Mars in 2020, when Earth and Mars are in a very favorable positional relationship. There will undoubtedly be a flow of new discoveries.
