EDITORIAL
The Spirit of the Schiller Institute
July 3 (EIRNS)—As the governments of Europe, and the EU itself, are becoming increasingly ungovernable, Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche offered a path out of the chaos: rather than fighting over what to do with the refugees flooding into Europe from the war-torn and impoverished nations of Southwest Asia and Africa, join forces instead with China’s New Silk Road, to rebuild those suffering nations and restore hope to their people. “We should keep in mind,” Helga said in her keynote address at the Schiller Institute Conference in Germany this past weekend, “that each of these individuals is as human a person as you and me and all of us in this room. These are not numbers; these are people like your neighbor, like your friend, your family.”
It is precisely the Spirit of the New Silk Road which has brought the potential of peace and development to the Korean Peninsula. President Trump, by renouncing the policies of perpetual war and “regime change” of the Bush and Obama administrations and their controllers in London, has demonstrated that the “unsolvable” Korea crisis is indeed solvable, through development, and through cooperation among the “four powers” of Russia, China, India and the United States.
Today, Trump called the newly elected President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), and, according to López Obrador, discussed “a universal deal involving development projects that would create jobs in Mexico, and, by doing so, reduce migration and improve security.”
Now, Trump, by scheduling a summit with Vladimir Putin, has shown himself open to a potential solution to the far more “unsolvable” crisis in Southwest Asia, the primary “cockpit for war” between East and West, created and nurtured as such by the British over the past century. One crucial issue for the Helsinki Summit is the war in Syria. Not only has Trump called for withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria, but the mostly Kurdish forces in Syria, who have been deployed under U.S. direction and U.S. air power against ISIS and al Nusra, are now reported to be negotiating with the Assad government to return the regions under their control to the legitimate government in Damascus.
Beyond that, it is known that Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu will be in Moscow on July 11, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will be in Moscow on July 13—both meeting with Vladimir Putin—and Putin will then meet with Trump in Helsinki on July 16. Multiple reports have indicated that a grand strategy for Southwest Asia as a whole will be discussed between the Russian and American leaders. Whether this is in the works or not, Trump recognizes that Putin has been seen as the only “honest broker” for all the players in Southwest Asia, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, and others. And China, through the New Silk Road, is already engaged in the early stages of the necessary reconstruction and development process, both in the Arab world and in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Schiller Institute Conference this past weekend, titled “The Urgent Need for a New Paradigm in International Relations—A Peace Order Based on the Development of Nations,” has demonstrated to the world that such cooperation between the sovereign nations of the world is possible, necessary, and totally feasible, in what should be known as the “Spirit of the Schiller Institute.” Many of those who attended from around the world have acknowledged that the Schiller Institute had done what no other institution could do—bringing leading figures from across Eurasia and Africa, with spokesmen also from the Trump circles in the U.S., to debate and deliberate on the means for bringing about the new paradigm, and ending the threat of war and economic dissolution now facing the trans-Atlantic nations and institutions.
Videos and transcripts from this historic conference are being posted on the LaRouchePAC website and in the upcoming issues of EIR magazine. DVDs of the four panels and the Classical music concert are being produced for wide distribution. There is no reason, and no excuse, for pessimism. It is a time for joyful celebration of the creativity of Man, as Schiller and Beethoven so beautifully expressed in the Ode to Joy: “Every Man becomes a brother, where thy gentle wings abide.”
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
López Obrador and Trump Discuss Development of Mexico
July 3 (EIRNS)—President Trump and President-elect López Obrador of Mexico talked by phone Monday, both saying it was “great.”
“I received a phone call from Donald Trump and we spoke for half an hour,” López Obrador wrote on Twitter. “I proposed exploring a universal deal (involving) development projects that would create jobs in Mexico and, by doing so, reduce migration and improve security,” he said. “The tone was respectful and our teams will be holding talks.”
Trump also mentioned the phone call as he addressed reporters in the Oval Office. “I think the relationship is going to be a very good one. We had a great talk,” he said. “I think he is going to try and help us with the border.”
Nunes Urges Committee Heads To Subpoena Obama/British Agents Behind Russiagate
July 3 (EIRNS)—Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has urged two fellow committee chairmen to subpoena a total of 27 former Obama administration White House, FBI, and State Department officials to testify before their committees, related to potential surveillance abuse during the 2016 election, as well as the State Department’s role in promoting the Steele dossier.
As reported by both the Washington Examiner and Daily Caller, in June 29 and July 2 letters to Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and Bob Goodlatte, chairmen of the House Oversight Committee and House Judiciary committee, respectively, Nunes said that his committee discovered matters “that likely fall within the purview of the joint task force of the Committees on Oversight and Government Reform and the Judiciary,” and refers to the list of people “who may have relevant information.”
Many of the individuals listed include those with direct ties to Christopher Steele or belonged to the nest of British intelligence/Obama operatives deployed to advance the “Russia collusion” hoax. These include Elizabeth Dibble, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in London, Victoria Nuland, former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and State Department official Jonathan Winer, who met Steele in the summer of 2016, and then provided the State Department with a two-page summary of Steele’s dirty dossier. Winer also met with at least two reporters to feed them information prior to the November 2016 election. Nuland approved a July 2016 meeting between an FBI legal attaché and Steele, who had otherwise provided her with many reports on Ukraine while she was orchestrating the coup against the elected government in Kiev.
According to the Daily Caller, citing the Wall Street Journal, it was Dibble who received information about the May 2016 meeting between Trump aide George Papadopoulos and Australian intelligence operative Alexander Downer, which reportedly sparked the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign. In that meeting, the inebriated Papadopoulos told Downer the Russian government had damaging information on Hillary Clinton, which Downer passed on to Dibble.
Nunes recommends that the task force consider interviewing these individuals “in an open setting,” but last night on Fox’s Laura Ingraham show, he emphasized that they can be compelled to testify. “This isn’t going to be like the documents, where we’ve had to continue to fight with the Justice Department in order to have access to documents. This is much different…. They will, if they do not agree to appear under oath, and testify, then they will be subpoenaed. That I could tell you for sure.”
U.S. Lawmakers Promote Good Will in Russia, Optimistic About Trump-Putin Summit
July 3 (EIRNS)—A delegation of Republican lawmakers is on a six-day trip to Russia from June 30-July 5. They were in St. Petersburg and took the high-speed train Sapsan, arriving in Moscow on Monday night, July 2.
In St. Petersburg the delegation met with the city’s Gov. Georgy Poltavchenko. At the beginning of the meeting, delegation leader Sen. Richard Shelby (AL) spoke about a necessity for improvement of relations between Russia and the U.S. and expressed the hope the Russian-American summit would facilitate the rectification of relationship. Later in Moscow, speaking with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Sen. Shelby elaborated, expressing the hope that “coming out of the Putin-Trump meeting in Helsinki will be the beginning maybe of a new day…. We recognize that the world is better off, I believe, if Russia and the U.S. have fewer tensions, get along a little better, maybe put aside some differences….There are some common interests around the world that we can hopefully work on together.”
In St. Petersburg, the delegation also visited the State Hermitage Museum where they were received by the museum’s Director General Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky. The Hermitage Museum press service reported that, Dr. Piotrovsky stressed the particular role the Hermitage Museum plays as a universal and encyclopedic museum center, and that “this encyclopedia was written in the Russian language and it tells the story of Russia’s statehood.”
In Moscow they met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and their fellow-lawmakers from the bicameral Federal Assembly, including State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin and Chairman of the Federation Council Committee for Foreign Affairs Sen. Konstantin Kosachev on July 3.
Speaking with the U.S. lawmakers Foreign Minister Lavrov said “I hope the visit will symbolize the restoration of ties between the parliaments. The parliamentarians are people’s representatives, they reflect the nation’s sentiment.” He went on, “I think the resumption of the inter-parliamentary dialogue is very timely in the run-up to the Helsinki meeting between the two presidents due in two weeks.” This is the first major visit of U.S. lawmakers to Russia in 10 years.
Speaker Volodin said, during his meeting with the delegation that this was the first U.S. Congressional delegation to visit the State Duma in a number of years, and “therefore, we have a lot of issues to talk about, considering that our relations within the parliamentary dimension have practically been reduced to zero. …We proceed from the assumption that you initiated this meeting,” the speaker went on to say. “In light of that, I want to emphasize your role. I believe it will also be appropriate to emphasize the role of Mr. [Jon] Huntsman, the U.S. Ambassador to Russia,” he observed. “As far as I know, the inter-parliamentary dialogue was his initiative.”
New York Times Freaks About Trump Letter to Merkel on German Defense Spending
July 3 (EIRNS)—U.S. President Donald Trump’s letters to a number of leaders of NATO member countries are continuing to make news. The New York Times yesterday leaked Trump’s letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, describing it as particularly sharp. “As we discussed during your visit in April, there is growing frustration in the United States that some allies have not stepped up as promised,” he reportedly wrote. “The United States continues to devote more resources to the defense of Europe when the Continent’s economy, including Germany’s, are doing well and security challenges abound. This is no longer sustainable for us.” Trump also claimed that Germany’s weak defense spending influences other NATO members to not spend enough. “Continued German underspending on defense undermines the security of the alliance and provides validation for other allies that also do not plan to meet their military spending commitments, because others see you as a role model.”
The Times frets that this is bad for NATO because it’s good for Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Mr. Trump’s criticism raised the prospect of another confrontation involving the President and American allies after a blowup by Mr. Trump at the Group of 7 gathering last month in Quebec, and increased concerns that far from projecting solidarity in the face of threats from Russia, the meeting will highlight divisions within the alliance,” the Times reports. “Such a result could play into the hands of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who is to meet with Mr. Trump in Helsinki, Finland, after the NATO meeting, and whose primary goal is sowing divisions within the alliance.”
The prospects of peace with Russia really scares these guys.
9/11 Family Targets Mueller Coverup of Saudis’ Role
July 3 (EIRNS)—Fox News host Tucker Carlson featured 9/11 family member Kathy Owens and her lawyer, Jim Kreindler, Monday night, as both directly targetted then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, Bush, Obama and Comey for quashing every investigation into the Saudi role in the 9/11 attack. They called on President Trump to release all classified documents relating to Saudi involvement in the terrorist attack. Their strong attack clearly reflects the material in the LaRouchePAC dossier on Mueller.
Owens said that then-FBI Director Robert Mueller “covered up and stifled the investigation into who was responsible for supporting the hijackers.” Asked why he would do so, she answered, “We won’t know until we see all the documents that are still unnecessarily classified.”
Her lawyer went further: “From the moment of 9/11, President Bush’s focus was on Iraq and Saddam Hussein. He didn’t want to hear about Saudi Arabia’s role. Saudi Arabia was an ally in the war against Iraq, and the President was a good friend of the Saudi Ambassador, who, by the way, he and his wife gave $25,000 to one of the government agents who was helping Hazmi and Mihdhar, the two terrorists [in San Diego]. There is this large body of evidence that Saudi government officials prepared for the hijackers’ arrival, helped them, gave them money, English lessons, safe houses and apartments, and provided the aid, without which it would have been impossible, according to the FBI agents who were working the case, for the terrorists to succeed.
“President Bush and Director Mueller, instead of furthering the effort to find the whole story, quashed it. Investigations were shut down, documents have been kept secret. And that was continued by President Obama and Director Comey.”
Kreindler then falsely credits Obama’s action to his desire to close the Iran deal, the only false statement in his report.
Kreindler continued: “The reason we are here, and our plea, the families’ plea to President Trump, is to declassify the documents. There is no reason for thousands of documents that reveal both the Saudi role and our own government’s coverup for 17 years to be kept secret.”
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Is the End Coming for the U.S.-Kurdish Alliance in Syria?
July 3 (EIRNS)—Pro-government news media in Syria are reporting that Syrian Kurdish groups in Hasakah province, in northeastern Syria, have reached an accommodation with the Syrian government in Damascus, while talks are ongoing between Kurdish militias and government officials in Raqqa province. Hasakah, Raqqa and part of Deir Ezzor province are all under control of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which are dominated by the Kurdish YPG militia. According to the Iranian Fars News Agency, the Doha-based daily Al Watan reported yesterday that Kurdish militia groups were in talks in both Damascus and Qamishli, on the Turkish border in Hasakah Province with senior officials from Damascus about returning control of their territories to the central government.
If confirmed, this is a dramatic shift in the situation in Syria, and could reflect Trump’s plans for a solution in Syria.
The actions the militias would take include removing images of imprisoned Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of Turkey’s Kurdish PKK, as well as official Kurdish flags and signs from their territories. Other sources said that the agreement endorsed by the Kurds and the army entails several more paragraphs that include the presence of the Kurdish militias among the ranks of the Syrian army, surrender of border crossings on both the Turkish and Iraqi borders to the Damascus army, and delivering control over oil and gas fields to the Syrian Oil Ministry.
Today, Al Masdar News reported from its own sources that the Syrian government sent a delegation to meet with the SDF in western Al-Raqqa on Sunday. According to Al Masdar’s military source, the Syrian government delegation discussed a number of topics with the SDF and PYD (the political wing of the YPG militia) officials in the western Al-Raqqa city of Tabqa. The source stated that the Syrian government offered the SDF and PYD officials the same deal they gave their allies in the Al-Hasakah Governorate. The source said that a deal has not yet been secured but that progress was made towards a political solution.
The Kurdish flags and images of Ocalan must have come down as agreed, because reports then appeared in Kurdish media quoting the head of the Public Relations Office of the PYD (Democratic Union Party) claiming that the PKK posters and flags came down as part of an initiative to regulate street advertising! The Kurdish militias otherwise neither confirmed nor denied that talks were ongoing with the government.
Mint Press News, which headlines its coverage “Is the U.S.-Kurdish Alliance Over?” writes that these agreements followed remarks by Syrian President Bashar al Assad in a recent interview with RT, in which he stated that the Syrian government was open to negotiations with the SDF because, after all, “the majority of them are Syrians,” and they don’t want to be puppets of foreigners. If negotiations failed then, Assad warned, the Syrian army would have no choice but to “liberate” areas occupied by the SDF, “with the Americans, or without the Americans.” No American response to the rapprochement between the Assad government and the Kurdish militias is yet reported, but it seems likely that no agreement would be possible without at least the acquiescence of the U.S. military.
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
Global Times: ‘The New York Times Should Ask What the U.S. Has Done for Sri Lanka’
July 3 (EIRNS)—Global Times on Monday struck back at the New York Times for the lying and deceitful diatribe they published on June 25 called “How China Got Sri Lanka To Cough Up a Port.” The long, detailed article reviewed the history of the Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka, which has become the center piece of most of the growing opus of attacks on the Belt and Road Initiative. The fact that Sri Lanka granted China a 99-year lease on the port and an area for building an industrial park is portrayed as China’s model for taking over the world and putting military installations everywhere. The Times published a map of the 35 ports China has built around the world, as if these were all military bases (NB: The U.S. maintains 800 military bases outside of the U.S., in 70 countries).
The New York Times article was the basis for a National Revieweditorial board article today, titled “Debt Trap Diplomacy,” asserting, for example, that “the BRI in reality is a signifier of China’s ongoing strategy to consolidate its power in the region and strengthen its geopolitical hand,” and that corrupt officials in poor nations “wind up bargaining away their own countries in exchange for infrastructure that serves the interests of China more than those of local citizens.”
Global Times responded that Sri Lanka’s former President Mahinda Rajapaksa wrote a rebuttal to the New York Times, stating that its report that only 34 ships used the port in 2012 conveniently leaves out that “the number increased to 335 in 2014 and the port made an operating profit of Rs.900 million ($5.69 million) in 2014 and Rs.1,200 million in 2015.”
Global Times further writes that at the end of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war in 2009, it was “in desperate need for infrastructure construction to boost economic development and improve people’s living standards. But its request for assistance was turned down by others except China. The large amount of Chinese concessional loans and investment helped Sri Lanka start a slew of major infrastructure projects including a coal-fired power station, shipping container terminals, an airport highway and the Hambantota Port. These have brought huge economic and social benefits to Sri Lanka and its people.
“In the meantime, what have Western countries done? They play up the human rights issue to pressure the South Asian country that was plundered heavily by Portuguese, Dutch and British colonists during its nearly 450 years’ colonization…. As the world witnesses seriously imbalanced development, what is needed most now is not the blame game or a hands-off approach, but authentic investment and aid as well as cooperation. Unfortunately, when China offers such help, these countries do nothing but chime in quickly through biased lenses.”
They conclude: “Instead of the New York Times demonizing China’s efforts, isn’t it better if it explores how the U.S. can participate in aiding impoverished countries?”
South Korea Unveils Its Master Plan for North Korea’s Development at Korea Global Forum 2018
July 3 (EIRNS)— Director General for Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation Lee Joo-tae of South Korea’s Ministry of Unification presented a “New Economic Map Initiative” at the June 27 Korea Global Forum 2018, sponsored by Seoul’s unification ministry, according to Asia Times today.
The plan, which Lee dubbed as creating “a virtuous circle of peace and prosperity,” includes laying “a foundation for economic unification,” for expanding the South Korean economy northward into Eurasia and securing a new growth engine for the Southern economy. “Seoul’s plan calls for phased implementation and active cooperation with regional economies—China, Russia and Japan and also includes North Korea’s economic objectives, based around its 2016-2020 five-year plan, its 26 special economic zones and its plans to realize socialism,” the daily reported.
The South Korean masterplan is based around three “economic belts.” “The first, on the west of the peninsula, the ‘Yellow Sea Industry/Logistics Belt,’ would create industrial cooperation in special economic zones, linked by a north-south logistics net of road and rail lines running through the key cities of Seoul, Pyongyang, and Shinuiju on the North Korea-China border, and then, into China. The second, on the more rugged eastern side of the peninsula, the ‘Pan-East Sea Energy/Resource Belt,’ would build infrastructure—LNG pipelines and rail lines—linking both Koreas to the Russian Far East. The third, the ‘DMZ Peace Belt,’ across the waist of the peninsula, calls for converting the undeveloped, 4 km-wide Demilitarized Zone into a cooperative space for ecological, environmental and tourist development. It would also include a ‘Maritime Peace Zone’ to obviate naval clashes,” wrote Asia Times.
The forum included a wide range of speakers who would be involved in such a regional development, including South Korea’s Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, and experts from China, Russia, the United States, Japan, and South Korea.
SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Navy Fathers of Nuclear Power Back Trump’s Strategy To Protect Nuclear Plants
July 3 (EIRNS)—Retired military, former government officials, industry executives, and former elected officials, are backing up the administration’s call to protect the nation’s nuclear power plants. The Toledo Blade (Ohio) reports July 1 that 75 dignitaries, a quarter of whom are retired admirals or vice admirals, and includes former Secretaries of State, former Senators, and governors, have sent a letter on June 26 to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, imploring him to take immediate action to prevent the closure of reactors. (The large Navy representation is not surprising, since the first generation of nuclear engineers, who operated the first American commercial power plants, came out of Adm. Hyman Rickover’s Nuclear Navy.)
The major point of the letter is that plant closures pose a threat to national security, the argument put forward most recently by the administration. Such a determination, it is proposed, would allow the Executive branch to invoke existing federal emergency law to stay the plant closures, in order to ensure the integrity of the electric grid. There has been vocal opposition from the usual suspects—the anti-nukes, the “renewables industry,” the oil and gas industry. Invoking national security will likely require approval from Congress. It will help to have former naval officers back them up.
