EDITORIAL
Ferocious Fight for Trump’s Presidency: Dershowitz Opines Mueller Report Will Be Politically Devastating
Nov. 25 (EIRNS)—Today, on ABC’s “Face the Nation,” Alan Dershowitz, a frequent defender of President Trump on behalf of the U.S. Constitution, said that Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel Report will be designed to be “politically devastating” to the President and that it could come down the pike soon, with the White House already working on its response. Dershowitz continues to state that President Trump will not face criminal charges from Mueller but could face legal jeopardy based on ongoing and simultaneous investigations in the Southern District of New York concerning his financial dealings. These investigations have been coordinated with Mueller’s probe. Dershowitz implied that Mueller would structure his report to be as damaging as possible to Trump in order to fuel impeachment proceedings in the House.
According to Dershowitz, both the Mueller report and the President’s response will be released publicly.
At the end of the segment, Dershowitz and others referred to dozens of sealed indictments on the docket of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. One of these sealed indictments, it has been recently revealed, belongs to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who, it would seem, is about to be prosecuted for publishing truthful information about the perfidies of Hillary Clinton and John Podesta in the last election.
With the meetings about to occur between Presidents Xi, Putin, and Trump in Argentina, and Trump’s midterm election victories in the Senate, it is clear that the British and their American allies are frantic to end Trump’s Presidency before any type of major revision can be made to the doomed City of London floating exchange rate, free trade globalist system, a system which is now teetering on the edge of collapse.
LaRouche PAC and EIR have repeatedly emphasized the British origin of the attacks on the Trump Presidency and candidacy. Trump’s 2016 election and his hold on the Senate both reflect a mass strike process occurring internationally against the failed globalist imperial system of perpetual war and savage austerity against human populations, as seen especially in France this past week. That is why the British launched their information warfare campaign against Trump, with the collaboration of their asset, Barack Obama, his intelligence chiefs, James Comey, James Clapper, and John Brennan, and a Democratic Party driven insane by manipulation of its identity politics belief system. That is why Robert Mueller, the immoral prosecutor of Lyndon LaRouche and others, and the leader of the coverup of the British/Saudi role in 9/11, was chosen as the legal hitman and fawned over by a media which is now almost totally enslaved to the psychological warfare needs of the failing elite.
As opposed to those who have pipe dreams about the end of the Mueller investigation, we have emphasized that this is a fight to the finish: Either Mueller and friends go down or Trump goes down. If the Democrats join in this British attack, rather than working with the President on a true economic revival and advance, they will reap the ensuing disaster, as President Trump argued in his analysis of the midterms.
In recent days there have been rumblings from the British press indicating that they fear declassification of their role in the ongoing coup in the United States could be near. Britain’s Telegraph reported an intense lobbying campaign by British intelligence officials and their lackeys in the American establishment to prevent Trump from declassifying documents revealing the British role. We are of the very firm view that the President should immediately declassify not only the documents concerning the Steele dossier, the FISA warrants, and British operations against Trump campaign officials on British soil, which are now on his plate. He should also declassify all documents referring to the reasons why he was targeted by the British and their Obama Administration lackeys in this attack on the United States, providing the American people with the ammunition with which to destroy Robert Mueller and his allies.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
The New York Times Shows Its Fangs in Mega-China Series
Nov. 25 (EIRNS)—The Sunday New York Times launched a mega-series on China last week in their Nov. 18 edition, with six long reports, essentially reassessing the American approach to China. Today, that series was completed with four long studies by Times journalists. The general message is that the current China-bashing campaign can’t work, but that confrontation, or even possible war, is inevitable, so the U.S. must devise a new strategy.
At the very end of today’s fourth article, the Times quotes from one of the more sane U.S. China scholars, Jeffrey Bader (Brookings, former Obama China advisor before the “pivot”): “Americans need to understand that if we go down the road of disengagement from China in pursuit of unbridled competition, it will not be a repetition of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The rest of the world, like us, is deeply entangled with China.” Most other countries, Bader says, “will not risk economic ties [with China] nor join in a perverse struggle to re-erect the Bamboo Curtain, this time by the West. We will be on our own.”
Despite this truthful statement, the series is replete with all the now-common diatribes against China, making clear that the Times, as the foremost media outlet for Wall Street and British policy in the U.S., is advising a reassessment, not to join the Belt and Road, but to find the necessary means to contain China, and to stop the Belt and Road and other manifestations of China’s effort to supposedly take over global domination from the Anglo-Americans.
The series is as much an attack on President Donald Trump as on China. The China-bashing of the recent period is described as Trump’s policy, naming Steve Bannon as the key architect of that policy. It mentions only in passing that Trump “speaks often about his friendship with Mr. Xi,” then claims that Kudlow, Mnuchin and Ross have tried to “put the brakes on Trump’s most belligerent trade moves,” when in fact it is obvious that Kudlow is working with Trump to make the Argentine summit a success. Instead, the Sunday New York Times emphasizes Bannon’s role, quoting him saying: “It’s either going to be the Confucian mercantilist model, or the democratic Western model handed down from the Greeks.” The Times also points to Graham Allison’s book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? and Vice President Pence’s Oct. 4 Hudson Institute speech “making the case for confrontation.”
The titles of the five-part series reveal the intent: “The Land That Failed To Fail”; “How China’s Rulers Control Society: Opportunity, Nationalism, Fear”; “Money and Muscle Pave China’s Way to Global Power”; “China’s Economy Became No. 2 by Defying No. 1”; and “The Road to Confrontation—The U.S. Adopts a Hard Line against China, and An Era of Engagement Recedes into the Past.”
Defense Department Report Depicts the Sorry State of U.S. Manufacturing
Nov. 23 (EIRNS)—If there is any upside to the crazy “China threat” scenario now spewing out from the media and from statements by hysterical U.S. officials, it is the growing focus that has been placed on the dilapidated state of U.S. industry and manufacturing. The September 2018 Defense Department report “Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States,” while comprising another screed about the “China threat,” also includes a rather insightful depiction of the destruction of U.S. manufacturing over the last two decades. And, interestingly enough, its Introduction begins with a quote from Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s 1791 Report on the Subject of Manufactures, in which Hamilton polemicizes that the U.S. requires a domestic industrial basis to supply military manufacturing needs.
“Between 2000 and 2010, over two-thirds of U.S. manufacturing saw production declines in terms of inflation-adjusted output,” the report says. “While multi-factor productivity in manufacturing grew on an average of 2% per year from 1992-2004, productivity has declined an average of 0.3% per year from 2004 through 2016, implying diminishing economies of scale from inputs including labor, capital equipment, energy, materials and purchased services. Between 2000 and 2010 alone, the U.S. lost over 60,000 manufacturing facilities. While the U.S. has seen an uptick in manufacturing, adding around 380,000 jobs since January 2017, much work remains to be done to remedy years of decline in the sector,” the report says.
One of the key areas of the decline has been in the manufacture of machine tools. “Critical to creating modern defense and non-defense products, machine tools impact the entire supply chain and multiple sectors. The U.S. once led the world in the innovation and capacity of its high-end machine tools sector, but U.S. standing has dropped significantly since 2000. Key changes in machine tool consumption affected global patterns of production.” While here again the report places the blame on China, which now produces 24.7% of machine tools globally, the U.S. also lags behind Japan, Germany, Italy and South Korea in the production of machine tools.
And the period of decline has also taken its toll on the labor force, the report states. “With the weakening of the U.S. manufacturing sector, the American manufacturing workforce has suffered, with employment peaking in 1979 and job losses accelerating significantly in the 2000s. … [T]he share of employment attributed to manufacturing has fallen dramatically, from over 30% in the 1950s to less than 10% in 2017. From 1979 to 2017, the U.S. lost 7.1 million manufacturing jobs, 36% of the industry’s workforce, with more than 5 million manufacturing jobs lost since 2000 alone. Job losses have been most pronounced in vital sectors subject to import competition, including primary metals, electronics, chemicals, and machinery. Manufacturing and defense industrial base companies’ inability to hire or retain U.S. workers with the necessary skill sets has led to significant gaps in skilled labor.
“A lack of skilled manufacturing workers and a decreasing number of jobs is destabilizing workforce readiness and leading to skill atrophy. … [S]uch instability and atrophy further increase the gap between job openings and hires and accentuate the effects of a shrinking workforce, making worker placement more challenging even when labor is needed.”
The report also speaks of the decline of innovation in manufacturing. “With increased offshoring of manufacturing, many companies have excised their process engineering capabilities, further reducing technical innovation and deterring future investment in next generation manufacturing. Together, these effects jeopardize the ability of Americas manufacturing base to supply innovative products and skilled workers to the industrial base, threatening capabilities needed for national security.”
If these characters would drop their crazy China “blame-game” and begin to place the onus, as President Donald Trump has, on the absolute failure of previous administrations to address these growing problems, this wake-up call could very well lead to the type of paradigm-shift which would open the door to the policies that Lyndon LaRouche has been proposing for at least the last four decades.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
New British Defense Chief Carleton-Smith Insists Russia Is a Greater Danger to U.K. Than ISIS
Nov. 24 (EIRNS)—Gen. Mark Carleton-Smith, the recently appointed British Chief of the Defense Staff, claimed, with a stiff upper lip, in an interview with the Telegraph that Russia is a greater threat to the U.K. than ISIS. “Russia today indisputably represents a far greater threat to our national security than Islamic extremist threats such as al-Qaeda and ISIL,” he said. “Russia has demonstrated that it is prepared to use military force to secure and expand its own national interests. The Russians seek to exploit vulnerability and weakness wherever they detect it.”
The defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Carleton-Smith said, means that the threat to Britain has changed and as a result, Britain and its allies needed to focus their attention on Russia, particularly after the Salisbury Novichok attack on March 4. “Russia has embarked on a systematic effort to explore and exploit Western vulnerabilities, particularly in some of the non-traditional areas of cyber, space, undersea warfare,” he said. “We cannot be complacent about the threat Russia poses or leave it uncontested. The most important conventional military response to Russia is the continued capabilities and coherence of the NATO alliance.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded by questioning Carleton-Smith’s intelligence. “In regards to the words from Britain’s chief of the general staff, we can’t stop someone from showing what his intellectual capacities are,” he told reporters in Lisbon, reports AFP. “I’ve already heard a lot of statements like this from the United Kingdom’s defense minister,” he said. “We can’t influence British government decisions on the people tasked with running their armed forces.”
ECONOMY
EU Verbal Assault on Italy Takes Grotesque Aspects
Nov. 23 (EIRNS)—Thursday morning, Nov. 22, EU Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici again attacked Italy, stating that the Italian government budget plan goes “against the interest of the Italian people” and stated that he is not “Santa Claus” and won’t make any concessions.
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini responded during a TV interview, in which he demanded “respect for the Italian people” and he does not want to quarrel, but if he must choose “between Brussels and Italy, the choice is an easy one.”
But Moscovici continued his provocations in an interview with Corriere della Sera, saying that “With Italy … we cannot have a carpet-dealer’s bargaining.”
Salvini replied: “The Italian people are not a people of carpet dealers or beggars. Moscovici is continually insulting Italy, but his salary is also paid by Italians. Enough is enough. Our patience is at an end.”
Italian media reported that on Wednesday evening, Nov. 21, Moscovici—a former French Finance Minister—participated in an electoral meeting with failing French President Emmanuel Macron and a few intimates.
European Parliament Member Marco Zanni Bringing Glass-Steagall Signatures to U.S. Congress
MILAN, Nov. 23 (EIRNS)—This morning Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Marco Zanni from Italy officially handed over, in the office of Lombardy Regional Councilman Bastoni of the Milan, the 217 signatures for Glass-Steagall collected by Zanni and by Massimo Kobe Massaron, an activist associated with MoviSol (part of the LaRouche movement), over the last two years. The list includes important signers within the present Italian government. Zanni will bring them to the U.S. Congress next week, during his meetings with Republican and Democratic Congressmen, in which he will bring an important message of cooperation between the Trump Administration and the Italian government, in order to achieve a fundamental change in economic and foreign policy.
Liliana Gorini, chairwoman of MoviSol, then introduced Zanni, reminding the audience that “his trip to Washington comes in a very important political moment, after the midterm elections which, contrary to what the press has been saying, were not at all a victory for the Democrats, but actually strengthened President Trump in his policy of dialogue with Russia and China, checkmating the Deep State, British intelligence and Hillary Clinton, who had been trying to impeach him in the last two years.” Trump’s candidates won, and also in the Democratic Party the policy that prevailed is that of dialogue with Trump, represented by Nancy Pelosi, rather than the war-mongering line of Clinton.
“I had the honor and pleasure of contributing to some of the meetings Zanni will have in Congress” Gorini said, “and I can only confirm that there is a lot of interest in what’s going on in Italy and the urgency of a new financial and credit system.”
Zanni opened his remarks recalling that “this is a fundamental moment of change, both in the United States and in Europe, and … there is great interest for the question of financial regulation, but also for what’s going on in Europe, with the first populist government. There are winds of change, since the Brexit, Trump’s victory, Renzi’s defeat in Italy in the referendum, and it is therefore important to speak with the U.S. Congress, since Italy does not have the support of Europe, but it has the support of the United States and Russia.”
Zanni continued: “Italy plays an important geopolitical role of mediation between Asia and the United States, which is the key to make sure that Trump adopts the policies that have been opposed by the Deep State, and stops the new Cold War.” Also in Europe, he said “there is a Deep State pushing for a geopolitical war” and therefore the opening of Trump towards Italy, and his invitation to invest in Italy and the Italian state bonds shows that, contrary to what Macron and others in the EU say, “our economic fundamentals are solid.”
Change is important “because Europe is becoming a problem for the whole world” and that will be seen in the European elections in May. “A change in Europe towards development and growth will also benefit the U.S.”
As for Glass-Steagall, Zanni concluded, taking delivery of the 217 signatures, “the Italian government has Glass-Steagall in its program, but it cannot realize it alone, it must be Europe and the United States together.” Zanni exposed ECB President Mario Draghi and the policy of the ECB which has been encouraging financial speculation, instead of safeguarding credit and savings, and the demonstration is the situation of Deutsche Bank which is “de facto bankrupt because of derivatives.”
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
UN Waives Sanctions for Inter-Korean Railway Survey
Nov. 25 (EIRNS)—At the request of the South Korean government, the UN Security Council and its sanctions committee have granted a sanctions waiver to a joint survey by North and South Korea on the reconnection of their railways, according to diplomatic sources cited by South Korean Yonhap news agency. The U.S. on Sunday also waved its separate sanctions to allow the survey to proceed.
“Our government has stood by the principle of honoring the sanctions regime and working closely with the international community as we conduct key inter-Korean projects…. Our government’s consultations with the committee regarding the inter-Korean railway survey have now wrapped up,” an official from the South Korean Foreign Ministry told Yonhap.
The move furthers the agreement between North and South Korea to connect roads and railways through the buffer zone that separates the two countries, which they hope to complete by the end of the year.
Cristina Fernández Urges Forget ‘Left/Right’ Labels, Ibero-America Needs a Positive Alternative
Nov. 23 (EIRNS)—Former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is challenging fellow “progressive” leaders of Ibero-America to conceptualize how to become a potent political force, rather than just “resisting.”
Speaking during the Nov. 17-19 First World Forum of Critical Thought, which took place in Buenos Aires, she emphasized that the old categories of “left” and “right,” which are political constructs dating from the time of the French Revolution, are outmoded and should be replaced with a positive alternative based on real ideas and identified with the needs of human beings. She underscored, Man is not a beast, although neo-liberalism tries to strip him of his humanity, and to replace “the ties of solidarity” with a “meritocracy” based on individualism, in which the state is absent.
To an audience that included former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Bolivian Vice President Alberto Garcia Linera, and former Colombian President Ernesto Samper Pizano, Fernández echoed concepts that have been elaborated in depth by American statesman Lyndon LaRouche.
Fernández rejected the media portrayal of this meeting as “counter summit” to the Nov. 30-Dec. 1 G20, and warned that progressives shouldn’t think of themselves as “counter” to anything, but rather as a “political space for ideas, which rises above the categories of left and right, to become a new category of thought, which identifies with people.” What is needed now, she said, is a new idea of a social, civic and patriotic front of all those damaged by neo-liberalism.
She pointed out that the concept of equality “is itself a political construct…. Equality, liberty and fraternity were constructs of the French Revolution, but are not something implicit in the human condition.” Neo-liberalism is also a political construct of capitalism, she said. So, then, what kind of capitalism do we want? Not one that says that consumption is bad, or is “populist,” as current President Mauricio Macri does, or one based on the law of the jungle.
Of course, she said, “all of us here support the idea of equality. But if we are stripped of our ideas and ability to think … surely none of us thinks we’re equal to the other. Why? Because the human condition means we have an identity…. This is what distinguishes us from animals…. Dogs are dogs, cats are cats … but not human beings.” Neo-liberalism, she emphasized “breaks down the ties of solidarity” and makes it impossible for people to think about what kind of government policies are good for them. It manipulates and degrades people psychologically, she underscored.
China’s Technological Leap Marks a Model for Southern Italy
Nov. 24 (EIRNS)—Speaking in his hometown of Palermo on Nov. 24, Italian Undersecretary for Economic Development Michele Geraci said that China’s “technological leap” can be a model for Southern Italy.
Geraci explained that the Italian government is working on three priorities for industrial development: 1) digitalization; 2) online payments; 3) infrastructure. All three of them must be done. If you do only two, it is useless. Firms must be able to offer and sell their products online, and to ship them quickly to the purchaser. China’s experience is useful: ten years ago, there were no online platforms; today, Chinese multinational Alibaba has in one day the same turnover as Italy in one year.
Infrastructure: The 1200 km between Beijing and Shanghai is covered by high-speed train in 7.50 hours. By comparison, a train from Palermo, on Sicily, “does not reach Salerno” on the mainland, just over 600 km in that timespan.
Italy can offer the ports of Genoa and Venice for the Maritime Silk Road as hubs for northern Europe, and the southern Italian ports as hubs for Africa for routes from Asia and America. The national air company Alitalia is seeking partners in the U.S. and in China because of that.
Foreign Direct Investment: The government is considering a lower taxation for greenfield investments as compared to mergers and acquisitions.
China has made a technological leap in ten years. Can Southern Italy make that, too? Geraci is convinced that it can be done, if the digitalization is implemented in connection with transport infrastructure.
Geraci also ridiculed accusations of “populism” and “sovereignism” against his government. We all agree that we don’t need austerity, he said. In a plane, when there is a drop of pressure, you are told to put on your own oxygen mask first and then help others. It is the same with our economy. That is what we need with “Italy first.” Our EU partners should understand that if we are better off, everybody will be better off.
Geraci said he found that when he spoke to investors in London last week, he had the impression that they are slowly beginning to understand this. He is now flying to New York for the same mission.
Major Election Defeat of Taiwan’s Anti-Beijing Democratic Progressive Party
Nov. 25 (EIRNS)—The midterm election in Taiwan Saturday was a somewhat surprising and most welcome solid defeat for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the anti-China regime backed by the British/neo-con camp to provoke war with China by pushing for Taiwan independence—a red line for China’s sovereignty.
The election for local mayors and administrators reduced the DPP positions from 13 (out of 22) to only 6. President Tsai Ing-wen resigned as chairwoman of the party, but intends to retain her presidency until the 2020 election. Even if she can hold on to her position, she is nonetheless unlikely to be the DPP candidate in 2020.
The Kuomintang resurgence included a victory in the two major cities outside Taipei, winning the mayoral seats in Kaoshing and Taichung. Although the DPP only won the presidency in 2016, they have held Kaoshing for 20 years. DPP held on to the Taipei mayor, but it was close and the vote is being contested.
The pro-DPP press complained mildly that Beijing had “interfered” in the election, but admitted that the DPP had lost support due to the economic problems, in part due to the DPP’s virulent anti-Beijing stance.
The voters also defeated a referendum on changing the name of their Olympic team from Chinese Taipei to Taiwan, while also defeating a referendum to legalize same-sex marriage.
The Global Times editorial praised the election results. They write that “Tsai played hardball to contain her major opponent by freezing the Kuomintang’s bank account in the name of an asset investigation,” and pointed to the hard line coming from Washington, selling arms and threatening to punish nations which switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing. “After taking office in 2016,” they continue, “Tsai refused to recognize the 1992 Consensus, a cornerstone agreement that stabilized the cross-Straits ties. The mainland and Taiwan, despite the progress they had made in the previous eight years, were reduced to tensions and confrontations.” They conclude: “Radical thinking and paranoia that permeates the green camp have misguided the DPP. The party needs to reflect on this failure and make an about-face on its stance in the cross-Straits ties.”
SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Scientists Reach the Conclusion To First Develop the Moon, Then Mars
Nov. 23 (EIRNS)—Under the Obama Administration, the Constellation program to go back to the Moon was trashed and replaced by a fantasy-ridden manned mission to Mars. Fearful that a lunar return would derail the Mars mission, a “Mars or bust” group, with Bob Zubrin and Buzz Aldrin as the most visible spokesmen, formed and functioned as a counter to the lunar program.
SpaceNews columnist Jeff Foust reported Nov. 21 on a panel discussion that took place on the Nov. 13, during which former lunar skeptics realized the value of developing the Moon first. Formerly skeptical scientists reported on technologies that could be tested on the Moon before being sent to Mars, and the science and resources that the Moon offers.
It is important that the space science community present a “united front” on what direction should be taken, especially before the Congress. The Congress members should not be given the responsibility of coming up with a space program.
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