EDITORIAL

U.S. Midterms Can Hand Worldwide Defeat to British Geopolitics

Oct. 29 (EIRNS)—Within 10 days we will know what kind of Congress President Donald Trump will have to deal with for the rest of his term.

Independent Congressional candidate Kesha Rogers’ race in Texas’ 9th CD has set the standard for new Members of Congress “above the parties” and reaching for a new paradigm of American participation in scientific and economic progress worldwide. Her vote, against Rep. Al “Impeachment” Green, will be a marker of how the American people have come through two years of escalating attempts to bring down their President, and whether they are ready to make their country and many other countries great.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche last week made presentations at important events in Moscow, explaining to Russians that the urgent question of what United States policy will be after the midterm elections, requires understanding that British intelligence—not Russia—interfered massively in the American electoral and political process. It is British intelligence that triggered and has escalated the attempted coup against President Trump, setting loose a new McCarthyism which has restricted his intention for effective relations with Russia. The great respect which many leading Russians have had, for many years, for Lyndon LaRouche, amplified the degree to which Helga LaRouche’s explanations were heard and reported.

President Trump will have another face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin just days after the midterm elections, and with President Xi Jinping of China, just weeks after that. If those elections have defeated the coup against him, the President could then move to the center of productive negotiations for development of industrial economies for the world’s nations. This means building new economic infrastructure internationally, acting to avert another financial blowout, and pursuing new missions of space exploration.

Not a “level playing field,” but one that ramps up—an economic and scientific curve that ascends more and more rapidly until it reaches out into the Solar System.

Despite the trade conflicts and sanctions, the New Silk Road has become an economic paradigm for not just China, but the economic powers of Eurasia as a whole. President Trump, by having changed the Korean Peninsula situation much for the better, is already involved in that New Silk Road, and his public speeches show that he knows that new transport infrastructure connecting South Korea through North Korea is crucial to it.

America has a great opportunity to defeat British Empire war policy, reject decades of deindustrialization and the drug legalization pushed by Soros’s organizations, and go for world leadership in science and industry again. Use the election to stop the coup against the President, and then take the economic actions of Lyndon LaRouche’s “Four New Laws To Save the U.S.A.”

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Nigerian President Reiterates Importance of Project To Refill Lake Chad

Oct. 29 (EIRNS)—Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said that the greatest investment Europe and America can make in Africa now is helping the continent accomplish inter-basin water transfer to recharge Lake Chad. Buhari spoke at State House, Abuja, Oct. 26, while hosting the chairman of the African Union Commission, Moussa Mahamat.

President Buhari stated that Lake Chad, which provided a means of livelihood to several millions of people in its four bordering countries—Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria—has now been reduced to 10% of its original size.

“People who depended on the lake for fishing, farming, animal husbandry, and many others, have been thrown into dire straits. That is one of the reasons youths now dare [to attempt crossing] the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea, to seek greener pastures in Europe. But helping to recharge Lake Chad will help a great deal in curbing irregular migration,” he said.

While stating that the size of Nigeria and resources available place a lot of responsibilities on its shoulders, President Buhari pledged that the country would continue to fulfill its obligations to the African Union. “At all international fora, we emphasize the matter of Lake Chad.”

New Silk Road Is Becoming a Project of All Asian Powers

Oct. 29 (EIRNS)—Asian economic powers are making combinations in preparation for a new economic system fostering productive investments across Eurasia and Africa. China’s Belt and Road Initiative may be becoming a cooperative project of the Asian economic powers.

A column in East Asia Forum Oct. 28 by Prof. Shiro Armstrong, director of the Australia-Japan Research Centre in the Crawford School of Public Policy of Australia National University, is called “Japan Joins To Shape China’s Belt and Road.” Armstrong observes, of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Oct. 25-27 China visit, that “This embrace of joint infrastructure investment cooperation through the Belt and Road Initiative … is on a scale even larger than was anticipated before Abe’s arrival in Beijing. There was also a raft of other announcements that will help normalize the political relationship between the two Asian giants that share one of the largest economic relationships in the world. But the most consequential of those could be the joint investment in infrastructure projects.” He says Asia needs huge infrastructure investments, and China-Japan-South Korea competition will improve them—stressing that infrastructure projects are inherently high financial risk for those providing the credit, but high productivity payoff. “As Chinese policymakers search for ways to better deploy the country’s vast sums of capital abroad, Japan has experience of doing just that dating back to the 1970s—including of geopolitical pushback.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s subsequent visit to Japan starting yesterday has resulted in a handful of agreements including one on high-speed rail infrastructure in India. But more importantly: Modi and Abe signed an agreement for immediate stand-up of a $70 billion currency swap line. This is clearly: a) for defense of the rupee against the impact of the so-called “reverse carry trade” which has driven it down, and the resulting ructions in the Indian financial system; b) to stop capital flight from India; and c) by stabilizing currency values, to reduce borrowing costs for Indian firms to participate in projects. This kind of stability arrangement is essential should America, Russia, China, India and Japan launch a new monetary arrangement modeled on FDR’s Bretton Woods, to foster industrial and infrastructure development in other countries.

If the United States and South Korea were now to agree to exempt new transport infrastructure from sanctions on North Korea, one should remember President Donald Trump’s comment at his Murphysboro, Illinois rally on Oct. 27, when discussing his diplomacy with Kim Jong-un and North Korea’s unique geographical and economic-development potential: “North Korea is going to be great. That location is so good. Between China, Russia and South Korea. What a location. It’s going to be fantastic.”

U.S. North Korea Negotiator in Seoul, May Discuss Allowing Rail Connections

Oct. 29 (EIRNS)—Stephen Biegun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea, arrived in Seoul on Oct. 28 for talks with South Korea’s Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs Lee Do-hoon about ongoing diplomatic efforts toward North Korea, Chosun Ilbo reported today. Most interestingly, the newspaper reports that “likely to be on their agenda is the possible exemption of inter-Korean projects such as building railroad links and forestation from sanctions against the North.”

The negotiators for North and South Korea announced after their last set of talks that the two sides expected to inaugurate the reconstruction of the rail links between the two Koreas sometime this year, which hinted that some such agreement had been accepted by the Trump Administration. This is further evidence of that.

Biegun also told AP in an interview that the shared U.S.-South Korea goal is ending 70 years of war on the Korean Peninsula. “The primary requirement for us to get to that endpoint is to achieve the finally, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea. I am absolutely confident that this is within reach, and I think our two Presidents are singularly focused on this goal.”

South Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator Lee Do-hoon visited Washington last week. No specifics were released about his discussions.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Big Texas Coastal Storm Protection Project Has Gotten a Boost

Oct. 29 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump signed his first infrastructure bill last week, the “America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018” which directed the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to accelerate its approvals of water infrastructure, and to provide them in five-year plans to Congress every year.

Given that this act’s language was in negotiation for more than a year, it may have influenced the fact that on Oct. 26, the Army Corps completed its three-year-long study of the “Ike Dike” and designated it as the preferred method of protecting the Texas Gulf Coast from hurricanes and storm surge. Talked about since Hurricane Ike a decade ago, the Ike Dike is a $30 billion project. It will be 70 miles of levees and seagates. According to Houston Chronicle: “At the entrance of Galveston Bay, a system of storm surge gates would be constructed to accommodate navigation to the ports of Galveston, Texas City and Houston. A large navigation gate would also be placed along the Houston Ship Channel. These gates would only close during storm events, and are modeled after similar gates in London on the River Thames and on the coast of the Netherlands.  A ‘ring levee’ would also be placed around Galveston to protect the backside of the island, a densely populated area, from surge and flood waters.”

This doesn’t start the project. They now must hold public hearings over extended period—then seek funds from Congress.

Bloomberg Oct. 29 ran an article, “Democrats Eye Push for Infrastructure Plan If They Retake the House,” whose substance was that “Rep. Peter DeFazio, who’s in line to become chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has said Democrats would seek a spending measure for roads, bridges and other public works if they take power.” DeFazio has been meeting with White House aides. He is quoted as saying, “It’s well past time for Congress and the Trump Administration to get serious about our infrastructure needs.” Trump told Fox Business News in an interview Oct. 17, “Infrastructure is going to be starting after the midterms and we think that is going to be an easy one.”

Neither side has a funding concept. In fact—for large and important projects—that will only come from cooperating with major Eurasian economic powers now building such projects.

Soros-Financed Drug Legalization Conference Begins in Mexico, Targets U.S.-Mexico Relations

Oct. 29 (EIRNS)—Just a month from the Dec. 1 inauguration of Mexico’s new President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, Mexico City today is the venue for a very large, three-day international pro-drug legalization conference, sponsored by George Soros’s Open Society Foundation (OSF) and the German Social Democracy’s Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, among others. Its focus is the British Empire’s anti-people and pro-population reduction agenda—an Opium War against the Americas—depicted as part of the “green wave moving through the region.”

The Seventh Latin American Conference and Second Mexican Conference on Drug Policy is intended to not only intervene into Mexico’s internal affairs, shaping the AMLO government’s policies, but also to create a point of conflict with the Trump Administration, collaboration with which is essential to solve the region’s most pressing problems. President Donald Trump has made clear he opposes any drug legalization in Mexico.

The conference has all of Ibero-America as its target; but the fact that it takes place now in Mexico makes its geopolitical aims clear. It also bears the pawprints of Olga Sanchez Cordero, AMLO’s Interior Secretary-designate, a Soros fellow-traveler and loud proponent of drug legalization and negotiation with drug cartels to “pacify” Mexico.

Sponsored also by Mexico’s Foreign Ministry, the conference couches its drug legalization thrust as concern for “harm reduction,” and defending human rights, alleviating poverty, social exclusion, and discrimination of women and young people. All these problems, according to the conference organizers, are allegedly caused by efforts to combat the drug cartels, eradicate marijuana and poppy cultivation, and promote crop substitution.

Thus, the question to be posed by one of the many panels, is “what can civil society do when the government does not want to make a change in drug policy?… As the green wave moves in the region, we see the effects of novel drug policies”—those that don’t “criminalize” drug use or production. These include “cannabis regulation models and poppy regulation proposals” in different countries, and evaluating their implementation “from the local to the international level.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Sen. Rand Paul Acts To Block Arms Sales to Saudis

Oct. 29 (EIRNS)—U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he will not let Saudi Arabia off the hook, in an interview with Politico published on Oct. 27. Senator Paul said that he intends to force another Senate vote to block billions in arms sales to the Saudis, and will not settle for targeted sanctions, believing that after the barbaric targeted killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the murderers can be brought to justice.

Paul emphasized that the Saudis should not get away with this: “Are we going to do fake sanctions? Are we going to pretend to do something by putting sanctions on 15 thugs [suspected in the killing]? Or are we going to do something that hurts them?” Paul ask, and explained that he thinks Saudi Arabia is trying to wait him out until the Khashoggi murder fades from the headlines, before announcing the arms sale.

Paul told Politico that he and his allies would win the vote if it were held now, and the Saudis know it. A number of Republican foreign policy voices have spoken out against Saudi Arabia, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Corker (R-TN), and pointed to the potential involvement of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Khashoggi’s murder. Senator Paul has put more emphasis, especially earlier, on the Saudis’ brutal genocide against Yemen, which involves U.S. matériel support.

“We would win the vote right now,” said Paul. “It would be a very bad vote if 60, 65 or even 70 people [in the Senate] voted to cut the arms sales for now and the President were to veto that; that would be bad.” President Trump “doesn’t want to disrupt the arms sales” to the Saudis, Paul told Politico, because the President believes they create hundreds of thousands of jobs. “And it’s something we have an honest disagreement on. I don’t think arms are jobs programs.”

Speaking with Politico in Hamilton, Montana, as he campaigned for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Matt Rosendale, challenging Democratic incumbent Jon Tester, Senator Paul also broke with President Trump on arms control, and called it a “terrible idea” for the United States to back away from weapons limitation agreements with Russia. He said that he has asked the President to appoint nuclear negotiators to preserve two nuclear weapons reduction treaties: the new START treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).

“I’m pushing hard on that,” Paul said. “Because I want to have this influence before we do that. But the President says he wants to do that. It’s a mistake to give up on that stuff.”

On Oct. 25, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a resolution, co-sponsored by Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Mike Lee (R-UT), Senate Joint Resolution 54, calling on the President to withdraw from the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Sanders cited two reasons: 1) the war is a strategic and moral disaster for the United States; and 2) the time is long overdue for Congress to reassert authority over matters of war. The Senate voted 55-45 to delay consideration of the resolution. Sanders said he will bring the resolution back to the floor with more co-sponsors in November, and House colleagues will offer a similar measure.

Mattis Defends U.S.-Saudi Relations, as UN Estimates for Yemen Famine Reach 14 Million

Oct. 29 (EIRNS)—Speaking to reporters in Bahrain, Oct. 27, after meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis defended the U.S.-Saudi relationship, telling reporters that the U.S. would “continue to support the defense of the Kingdom,” and that American “respect for the Saudi people [remains] undiminished.” This despite increased tensions arising from the Oct. 2 murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi and the ongoing genocidal war against Yemen.

Mattis said, “The U.S. will continue to offer targeting and other military support to Saudi Arabia in its campaign in Yemen while pushing for a negotiated end to the punishing war.”

But Al Monitor platform reported that its columnist Bruce Riedel, a retired career CIA official and National Security Council staffer, now at Brookings Institution, who called on the United States and Europe to seize the “Khashoggi” opportunity to force an end to the Saudi-led coalition war on Yemen. “There is an opportunity in all this for us,” Riedel told the forum at Brookings Oct. 25. “Refocus attention on Yemen and on quitting the war as quickly as possible.”

Two days before Riedel made his remarks, UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock gave what Al Monitor called a “stark briefing to the UN Security Council on Oct. 23” updating his earlier forecast of starvation in Yemen, predicting that the number of famine victims could reach 14 million. On Sept. 21 Lowcock had told the UN Security Council that his estimate of food insecure victims in Yemen was 11 million people: “That’s what I said on Sept. 21,” he told the UNSC. “We now think, Mr. President, that estimate was wrong. Our revised assessment … is that the total number of people facing pre-famine conditions, meaning they are entirely reliant on external aid for survival, could soon reach not 11 million but 14 million. That is half the total population of the country.” The food aid obviously will not reach them as this is beyond UN capabilities in a war zone.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

U.S. Has Stupidly Imposed Sanctions on Nuclear Trade with China

Oct. 29 (EIRNS)—The Nuclear Energy Institute released a statement on Oct. 24 in response to the administration’s imposition of sanctions on civilian nuclear cooperation with China. The sanctions do not affect the four nuclear reactors that Westinghouse is building in China, but target the advanced nuclear technologies that both countries are developing. The statement says that already, applications for export authorization for commercial nuclear technology, equipment, and material to China “have been on hold since last year during the National Security Council-led policy review.” The review was used to create a new policy framework that “will establish a presumption of denial for transfers to the China General Nuclear Power Group….”

What are under sanction are non-light-water advanced reactors and small reactor technology. This would include Generation 4 technologies, such as sodium cooled reactors, and the small reactor development projects that are a major part of U.S. nuclear technology development. The laughable aspect of this is the amount of money China is investing in advanced nuclear technology development, including fusion/fission hybrids, as compared to the U.S.

NEI reminds that “various nuclear technologies will be shut out of the world’s largest market,” and that “the impact is clearly significant.” The nuclear industry is reviewing the potential impact of the sanctions, they say.

OTHER

Vitrenko Hits Back Hard at Atlantic Council Lackey Who Smeared LaRouches on Russian TV

Oct. 29 (EIRNS)—While Helga Zepp-LaRouche was in Russia making several presentations, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU) Chair Dr. Natalia Vitrenko also spoke on a major Russian TV show, on the LaRouches’ record of policy and her own in supporting them.

On Oct. 26, Dr. Vitrenko posted a 38-minute video in defense of Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and challenged Ariel Cohen (of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center) to debate after he had slandered them. On Oct. 24, Helga LaRouche’s remarks about British interference in American elections had been brought up on the “Dialogue with Vladimir Solovyov” show on Rossiya 1 channel, an important political program. Solovyov asked to know more, and then Cohen, one of his guests, “volunteered” and slandered the LaRouches.

Vitrenko counterattacked in her video by reading quotations from Russian wires reporting Mrs. LaRouche’s presentations, in which she had shown that the British elite hates Trump because of his desire to improve relations with Russia. She discussed the truth of that accusation, and the need to understand it in order to rise above a simplistic “Democrat or Republican” analysis of the United States. Later in the Solovyov program, Dr. Vitrenko laid out the 25-year history of the fight against IMF policies by the LaRouches; her own 1999 Presidential campaign in Ukraine (during which she was nearly assassinated). Here she used Lyndon LaRouche’s famous 1995 “Triple Curve” heuristic of a financial breakdown process, as her illustration.