EDITORIAL

Ten Days to the G20 Great Power Summits; Focus on the New Paradigm Opportunities

Nov. 19 (EIRNS)—There are 10 days to go to the Group of 20 Buenos Aires summit, the occasion for meetings between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping, and between Trump and President Vladimir Putin, and other bilaterals, which can provide critical momentum towards the New Paradigm initiative of a new world credit system favoring development—a “New Bretton Woods.” Present among the G20 will be leaders of the Four Great Power nations—U.S., China, Russia, India—who represent, as referenced by statesman Lyndon LaRouche, the authority to make urgent shifts in world affairs.

At the same time, the challenge is to rout the attacks against this development potential, coming from the perpetrators of a “New Thucydides Trap.” These political powers and figures assert that China and the Belt and Road Initiative are threats to the Old Order of London/Wall Street, and they back geopolitical strategies of confrontation, to the point of war.

Look at the attacks against China and the BRI in Europe. The EU is pushing for establishing a new review body to inspect, and deter, economic investment from China into Europe. On the military front, French President Emmanuel Macron has delusions of creating a new European army, to defend against China and Russia. He and German Chancellor Angela Merkel again spoke of this at a World War I commemoration in Berlin today.

In the Pacific, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence led a nearly non-stop denunciation of China and the BRI, while unfortunately representing the U.S. at the ASEAN (Nov. 14-15), and APEC (Nov. 15-18) summits in Singapore and Papua New Guinea. Speaking to conference sessions and reporters, Pence said that “authoritarian” China is luring nations into inferior projects, and debt traps. He ridiculed the BRI as “a constricted belt and a one-way road.” Pence counterposed the geopolitical bloc called the Quad—the informal Quadrilateral Security Dialogue of the U.S., Australia, Japan and India—to lead the way in the “Indo-Pacific.”

No wonder, for the first time in 29 years, the APEC summit could not issue a joint communiqué. The wording fell victim to the divide Pence opened with China. In fact, during the APEC summit, Pence announced that a new trilateral infrastructure fund set up by the U.S., Australia and Japan, aimed at countering China in the South Pacific, was now operational. He also announced that the U.S. would partner with Australia in its development of a military base on Manus Island, owned by Papua New Guinea. This would add to a U.S. chain of bases, from Manus, to Guam, to Japan to Hawaii.

Likewise, Pence was provocative to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Pence’s opening remarks to him, in an informal exchange on the sidelines of an ASEAN session Nov. 14, were, “Why does Russia keep meddling in U.S. elections?” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of this yesterday, “The Americans are constantly repeating election interference as a mantra.”

Yesterday Trump himself slammed the idea that there was collusion between Russia and his campaign to interfere in the elections. “There was no collusion. It’s a scam.” He denounced these attacks on him, in a long interview Nov. 18 with Fox News’ commentator Chris Wallace. Trump defended his “ability to fight back” against such attacks. He wants “victory for the United States.”

The advance work for the G20 side summit meetings for Trump is underway, despite Pence’s gross misconduct. In Moscow today, Peskov said that serious preparations are taking place for the second Trump-Putin meeting. Peskov reported that what Putin replied to Pence’s rude question, was that the topics he looks forward to discussing with Trump include the INF, Syria, Iran and Ukraine.

For the Xi-Trump talks, reports are out that working groups for each side, headed by Vice Premier Liu He and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, will confer on site in Buenos Aires, not in Washington, D.C. as originally planned. This way, they can have more effective input into the meeting of the two leaders.

Looking towards the new year and new era, Xi Jinping said at the APEC talks that “mankind is at a crossroads.” There is a “development trend” underway, which we must take. He announced the importance of the second “Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation” in April 2019.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Feisty Trump Tells Fox News, ‘If You Don’t Fight Vigorously, You’re Not Going To Win!’

Nov. 19 (EIRNS)—In a wide-ranging interview yesterday with Fox News commentator Chris Wallace, President Donald Trump rose above Wallace’s obvious attempts to shape the discussion by instead asserting reality.

When Wallace stated that “some people” found the President’s tone “divisive,” Trump said that if he had acted differently, “I wouldn’t have gotten what we had to get … you have to have a certain ability to fight back and, as you know, people … take strong stands on me both ways.” He continued: “A lot of times, you can’t practice tone because you have people coming at you so hard, that if you don’t fight back in a somewhat vigorous way, you’re not going to win. And we have to win. This country has to win.”

To Wallace’s suggestion that Trump has attacked the media, just because he didn’t like their negative coverage of him, Trump stated very simply that the media lie. He pointed to the example of media claims that he refused to visit the American cemetery in France, during his Nov. 11 visit there, when, in fact, the Secret Service told him he shouldn’t travel there by helicopter because of the heavy fog which represented a security concern.

The President dismissed Wallace’s attempt to use the case of CNN reporter Jim Acosta to belabor his point on Trump’s attacks on the media, by reiterating that “news about me is largely phony. It’s false.” Fake news, he warned, “is what’s tearing this country apart, because people know, people like things that are happening, and they’re not hearing about it.” Rather than calling him to check a story, he said, the mainstream media “just make things up. Fiction.”

Wallace implied that by not answering Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s questions about obstruction of justice, or agreeing to a sit-down interview with him, Trump is, in effect, admitting to obstruction.

“There was no obstruction,” Trump said, adding that neither is there proof of collusion. “I think we’ve wasted enough time on this witch hunt,” he said, emphasizing that further discussion with Mueller is unnecessary. “We gave very, very complete answers to a lot of questions that I shouldn’t have even been asked, and I think that should solve the problem.”

Trump admitted that it took “a little while” to get used to the idea of being President of the United States, and pointed to the beauty of the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk which he uses, that was also used by Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. He remarked that the desk was especially important to him, because it was also used “by some people that I respect.”

Pence Aims To Wreck U.S.-Russian Relations with Shameful Behavior Toward Putin

Nov. 19 (EIRNS)—In commentary to Russia’s Rossiya-1 TV network, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, reported on U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s efforts to sabotage any positive U.S.-Russian relations.

Peskov reported that when Pence met briefly with President Vladimir Putin during the ASEAN summit, Pence began the conversation by bringing up the issue of Russia’s “meddling” in U.S. elections. “The Americans keep on repeating allegations about meddling with the elections as a mantra,” Peskov remarked, as reported by TASS. “As a matter of fact, Pence started the conversation with that.”

Despite Pence’s shameful behavior, Peskov continued, Putin was finally able to touch on key matters that he would like to discuss with Donald Trump when the two meet in Buenos Aires on the sidelines of the G20 summit. These include the INF Treaty, Ukraine, Syria and Iran, among other issues.

“The President laid bare all of our concerns to Pence quite concisely and quite clearly, so that this concise and clear summary be conveyed to president Trump,” Peskov explained. While stating that there are no breakthroughs in relations with the U.S., and that “none can be expected,” he noted that planning for a meeting between the two Presidents is underway.

Pence’s Geopolitics Clashes with China and Development Dynamic at ASEAN, APEC Summits

Nov. 19 (EIRNS)—Vice-President Mike Pence kept up a steady stream of invective against China, the Belt and Road Initiative and other aspects of the Asian development dynamic, at the sessions he attended of this year’s Singapore meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Nov. 14-16; and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit and Economic Leaders meetings over Nov. 15-18 in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.

Given the acrimony, APEC issued no joint communiqué by the 21 APEC nations, for the first time in the 29 years of summits. Instead, a “Chairman’s Consensus” presentation was given by Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, who told reporters afterward, “The entire world is worried” about the tensions.

Pence addressed the APEC CEO Summit Nov. 17, and otherwise spoke daily with reporters. His main line of attack was that China is authoritarian, and luring vulnerable nations into low-quality projects, and “debt traps.” Pence held forth, “Know that the United States offers a better option. We don’t drown our partners in a sea of debt; we don’t coerce, compromise your independence. We do not offer a constricting belt or a one-way road. When you partner with us, we partner with you and we all prosper.”

Pence’s concrete proposals included praise of the “Quad”—the informal Quadrilateral Security Dialogue of the U.S., Japan, Australia and India; and a focus on development in the “Indo-Pacific,” a counter-perspective to China and the Belt and Road Initiative. Pence declared, “Our vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific will prevail.” He announced on Nov. 17, that a new trilateral infrastructure fund with Australia and Japan—to counter China in the South Pacific region—was now operational.

On Nov. 17, Pence also announced that the U.S. would join in expanding the military base being developed on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, being done by Australia and P.N.G. Otherwise, Pence held forth repeatedly against China with a litany of accusations, from unfair trading practices to human rights violations.

So cozy was Pence’s geopolitics with Australia, that it seems to have created a diplomatic gaffe, when Pence and the Second Lady planned to avoid staying at Port Moresby for APEC, and stay instead in Cairns, whence they would commute to Port Moresby. To avert the slight to the host country, Pence’s hotel plans were changed at the last minute.

Pence had no separate, bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping. But according to what Pence told the media, he had two “candid” short talks with Xi. Voice of America quotes Pence’s description, “There are differences today. They begin with trade practices, with tariffs and quotas, forced technology transfers, the theft of intellectual property. It goes beyond that to freedom of navigation in the seas, concerns about human rights.”

Meantime, there were many other meetings of note between attending heads of state and high officials on the sidelines of the APEC and ASEAN sessions. For example, President Xi met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Nov. 17 in Port Moresby. They spoke of deepening their strategic cooperative partnership, and especially communicating on the Korean Peninsula situation. Xi called for more efforts from both sides to collaborate in the BRI framework.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Both Sides in Yemen War Move Toward UN-Brokered Talks

Nov. 19 (EIRNS)—The Houthi movement in Sana’a announced this morning that they would be suspending their missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and their Yemeni proxy forces in response to UN envoy Martin Griffiths’ efforts to convene new peace talks in Sweden. “We announce our initiative … to halt missile and drone strikes on the countries of aggression,” Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the head of the Houthis’ Supreme Revolutionary Committee, said in a statement reported Reuters. The decision was based on discussions with Griffiths to show “good faith” and support peace efforts, he said. A few hours later, Saudi King Salman, during a speech to the Kingdom’s Shura Council, announced that the Hadi government has agreed to participate in the peace talks set to be held in Sweden “soon.” Al Jazeera then reported that the Hadi government’s foreign ministry said it had informed Griffiths of its decision to send “a government delegation to the talks with the aim of reaching a political solution,” according to the government-run Yemen News Agency (SABA).

Griffiths reportedly welcomed the Houthi announcement in a Twitter post and called on all parties continue to show restraint “to create a conducive environment for convening the consultations.” A start date for negotiations has yet to be announced.

Date Set for New Astana Meeting for Syria Peace, as Situation in Idlib Deteriorates

Nov. 19 (EIRNS)—Kazakhstan Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov told reporters today that the next meeting of the Astana format on Syria will be held in Astana on Nov. 28-29, TASS reported. He said that the meeting is planned “in the traditional format, with the participation of delegations of the countries-guarantors [Russia, Iran, Turkey], the government of the Syrian Arab Republic, the Syrian armed opposition, observers are invited to this meeting—the UN and Jordan.” He added that “The participants plan to discuss the current situation in Syria, in particular in Idlib, creating conditions for the return of refugees and displaced people, and post-conflict reconstruction.”

Meanwhile, the situation in Idlib continues to deteriorate further, particularly around the southern periphery of the buffer zone set up under the Russian-Turkish agreement. Al Masdar News reported this morning that Russia has resumed reconnaissance flights over jihadi positions in the buffer zone in preparation, it says, for a Syrian army assault on the southeastern part of the zone. The report includes video of an Il-20 reconnaissance aircraft flying over northern Hama. Al Masdar reported yesterday another jihadi attack on Syrian forces in the same area of northern Hama, which was repelled by the Syrian side. Syrian forces are also beefing up their positions in the west Aleppo suburbs, in order to counter militant attacks by elements of the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army.

South Korean Nuclear Negotiator in Washington for Talks

Nov. 19 (EIRNS)—South Korea’s top nuclear negotiator, Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs Lee Do-hoon, will be in Washington today through Nov. 21 for meetings with U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun. The Korea Herald reports that among the items on their agenda is the formation of a joint consultative group which, among other things, is expected to discuss preparations for a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and North Korea Workers Party Central Committee Vice-Chairman Kim Yong-chol. “The working group may hold its first meeting, if possible, after final coordination discussions,” Lee told reporters at Incheon International Airport before his departure. The U.S. State Department said today the working group “would further strengthen our close coordination on our diplomacy, on our denuclearization efforts, on sanctions implementation, and inter-Korean cooperation that complies with the UN sanctions.”

The U.S. has complained that inter-Korean relations are developing faster than the denuclearization process and there is speculation reported in the Korean English-language press that the working group is designed to slow things down. According to news reports, inter-Korean plans to re-open railway crossings across the DMZ have been blocked by the U.S. military command, because taking supplies such as oil into the North contravenes UN Security Council sanctions imposed on Pyongyang.

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Corbyn Laid Out Labour Party’s Alternative to May’s Brexit Deal

Nov. 19 (EIRNS)—British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn presented his alternative to British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plan in an address to the British Confederation of Business and Industry (CBI) today. He made his remarks after May herself spoke to the CBI today.

Corbyn called May’s government a “government in disarray,” which negotiated a “botched up” Brexit deal. He said his party would vote against the deal and call for new elections. He said that “business as usual isn’t working…. To meet the greatest challenges facing our country today, we shouldn’t fear change, we should embrace it. Deep-seated change is needed to avoid a damaging Brexit that will hurt enterprise, jobs and living standards, and instead use it as a catalyst for economic transformation,” he said.

He said “change is needed to tackle the huge inequality that has distorted the economy and disfigured our society. A good Brexit plan for this country is not just about what can be negotiated with Brussels; it must also include a radical program of investment and real change across our regions and nations.

“In 2016 the country voted to leave the EU against the economic backdrop of post-crash Britain: a million families using food banks, over 4 million children living in poverty and real wages that are lower today than they were in 2010.

“Wealth hasn’t trickled down. Instead, rigid and outdated economic thinking has helped create a situation where 20 percent of Britain’s wealth is in the hands of just 1 percent of the population.”

He called for the negotiation of a permanent customs union with the EU.

Meanwhile an opinion poll by The Observer gives the Labour Party a rating of 39%, a three-point lead over the Conservative Party, which is down to 36% as compared with a month ago.

U.S. Culture of Despair: Alcoholism Kills More People Yearly than Even Opioid Overdoses

Nov. 19 (EIRNS)—The urgent necessity of creating a culture of optimism and hope for the future, premised on policies of rapid economic development and education of the young, is underscored by the report in the Nov. 16 edition of USA Today, documenting that alcoholism is now killing more people in the United States than drug overdoses. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) reports that compared to the 72,000 people who died from opioid overdoses in 2017, about 88,000 people die each year from causes related to alcohol.

Cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, pancreatitis, and suicide, among other things, are causes of death as a result of alcoholism. As the non-profit Well Being Trust aptly described it, losses from drugs, alcohol and suicide are appropriately called “despair deaths”—and they are on the increase in the U.S. in alarming numbers.

Between 2007 and 2017, alcohol-related deaths increased by 35%, according to a report from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. The death rate rose by 24%. Deaths among women rose by a stunning 67%, and among men by 29%. Max Griswold, who helped develop the alcohol estimates for the Institute, warned that “the story is that no one has noticed this. It hasn’t really been researched before.”

The District of Columbia, the nation’s capital, has the highest death rate from alcohol in the country. Georgia and Alabama are second and third, and Alabama ranked third among those states with the strongest alcohol-control policies. Psychologist Benjamin Miller, chief strategy officer at the Well Being Trust, said that larger health challenges in the South are to blame for high alcohol death rates. Southern states typically rate near the bottom in national rankings in cancer, cardiovascular disease and overall health.

The Hell that Fascist Greenie Austerity Has Wrought in California

Nov. 19 (EIRNS)—In remarks to the Nov. 17 gathering in New York in which Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche was the featured speaker, California LaRouche PAC leader Michael Steger laid out a grim picture of the devastation in California—not only the terrible forest fires, but the complete breakdown of infrastructure and public policies that any future-oriented government would have maintained.

“It’s been 20 years of economic insanity that we warned has been a fascist policy, directly from the British, through [former Governor Arnold] Schwarzenegger, which has led to this,” Steger said. Schwarzenegger was “backed by the Rothschilds, and this is exactly the kind of policy you get: an epidemic in homelessness, typhus, the fires…. We’ve obviously got to save California, we’ve got to save the country.”

Steger pointed out that these policies are responsible for the outbreak of typhus (a rickettsial bacteria, in this case spread by fleas) in Los Angeles; an entirely different disease, typhoid (Salmonella typhi, is spread person to person by infected feces and urine, and via contaminated food and water.

“If people don’t know, typhoid is largely spread by human feces not being disposed of properly. So it’s not like ‘Skid Row,’ it’s like ‘Skid Block,’ all over Los Angeles. There’s a homeless epidemic, which then leads to a typhoid epidemic. You’ve what they call … ‘Poop Squads’…. They’re paying people like $90,000 a year to deal with human waste on the streets. And that’s more than they pay the social workers to deal with the homeless.”

According to the Foundation for Economic Education, Los Angeles officials report they now receive 1,900 cleanup calls per month for feces removal, due to the growth of homeless camps. This situation, Steger said, is hard to imagine when the state was the leading industrial and scientific state, 50 years ago.

The rampaging forest fires give expression to this, he underscored. The huge “Camp Fire,” as it’s known, started, and is so bad “that we’ve had ‘red alert’ smoke in the Bay Area. It’s now been 10 days straight.” The fires, he emphasized, are the result of a process of 20 years of major neglect: “Because you had the deregulation of the energy program, with Enron, and you had the bankruptcy of the state; and then you had practically what was a color revolution with Schwarzenegger [2003-2011] … who brought in a hard-core greenie and austerity program” that cut all the fire infrastructure, “so anything that you wouldn’t use except under emergency circumstances, was cut out of the budget for good.”

NEW WORLD ECONOMIC ORDER

Japan’s Shinzo Abe To Meet Vladimir Putin Three Times in Next Six Months

Nov. 19 (EIRNS)—Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin three times over the next six months. This was stressed today by the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Alexander Shokhin, TASS reported: “In the next six months, our leaders should meet at least three times. At the end of this month in Buenos Aires; there will be a meeting in Moscow at the end of January, and I understand that the official visit of the Russian President to Japan is planned for the G20 summit in Osaka.”

SCIENCE & INFRASTRUCTURE

Russia’s Progress MS-10 Cargo Spacecraft Successfully Reaches ISS

Nov. 19 (EIRNS)—The Progress MS-10 cargo spacecraft which was launched on Friday, November 17 on a Soyuz-FG rocket successfully docked to the International Space Station on Nov. 18 according to TASS. It delivered about 2.5 tons of cargo. The mission spokesman said, “The Progress MS-10 cargo spacecraft docked to the ISS in an automated mode at 22:29 Moscow time [19:29 UTC].” The spacecraft docked at the Zvezda service module.

OTHER

The Only Solution to U.S. Mexico Migrant Crisis Is a New Paradigm

Nov. 19 (EIRNS)—The crisis in Tijuana, Mexico on the U.S. border heated up over the Nov. 17-18 weekend, with riot police deployed to handle a reported 3,000 Central American migrants marching from Honduras since Oct. 12. Thousands more are expected.

The situation is untenable. Absent a program of economic development for the whole region—including Mexico, the U.S. and Central America—which China should be invited to be part of, the result will be a huge political and economic upheaval.

Tijuana authorities are struggling to provide food, clothing and shelter for the migrants, many of whom will wait months, or longer, to have their as asylum requests processed (roughly, 100 asylum requests/day are processed at Tijuana’s main crossing).

Financial resources are to deal with this influx are far too small. Tijuana government officials have requested emergency assistance from the federal government. Meanwhile, groups of self-proclaimed “defenders of the nation” waged protests in Tijuana Nov. 18, to denounce the migrants, calling them “invaders” and demanding they leave. Riot police were deployed.

From the U.S. side, ABC News in Tijuana reported today that U.S. border officials temporarily closed northbound traffic at one of the busiest points to install new security barriers; and also closed one of two pedestrian crossings at San Ysidro, to prevent a mass rush. The new barriers will create hardships for Mexicans who cross the border daily to work in the U.S.; an estimated 110,000 people cross the border daily in 40,000 vehicles. Tensions are rising.