EDITORIAL

The British Add Corbyn to Their ‘Russiagate’ Targets

Dec. 10 (EIRNS)—The exposure last week of the British subversion operation known as the Integrity Initiative—a government-funded media/intelligence operation to subvert nations and institutions which refuse to submit to the Empire’s plan for war on Russia—has led to a new explosive revelation, as the British Labour Party has caught them running direct interference in their own national political and electoral process. The “Russiagate” coup attempt against President Donald Trump, run by political assassin Robert Mueller on behalf of MI6 and their assets in the Obama Administration, has now been caught running the same criminal operation against the opposition party in the U.K. itself. The Daily Record of Scotland on Sunday revealed that the Integrity Initiative Twitter feed has been running attacks on Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn as a Russian agent. “What [Corbyn] has done,” one tweet reads, “wittingly or unwittingly, is work with the Kremlin agenda.”

The Labour Party has reacted vigorously. Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry issued a statement: “It is simply outrageous that the clearly mis-named ‘Integrity Initiative’—funded by the Foreign Office to the tune of £2.25 million over the past two years—has routinely been using its Twitter feed to disseminate personal attacks and smears against the Leader of the Opposition, the Labour Party and Labour officials.” The Foreign Office stumbled all over itself, with Foreign Office Minister of State for Europe and the Americas Alan Duncan promising “an immediate investigation.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche made the broader point, that Americans can learn from this internal subversion of democracy in the U.K. itself that it is entirely the British—not the Russians—who are interfering with democratic processes and elections in the U.S., the U.K., and around the world.

President Trump is continuing to battle the coup-plotters in the U.S., while also building his personal ties to Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, even in the face of the “New McCarthyite” fraudulent attacks from the Democrats, and even from some Republicans. His economic adviser Larry Kudlow reported Sunday that the Chinese are moving rapidly to implement the agreement reached between Xi Jinping and Trump in Argentina, while Trump is optimistic that the U.S., China and Russia can reach an arms control accord soon.

Europe, meanwhile, is descending into chaos. Theresa May today postponed the Parliamentary vote on her fake Brexit plan, admitting that she had far from enough votes to pass it. The new CDU leader in Germany, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, is proving to be a clone of Angela Merkel and will do nothing to stop the escalating collapse of all the traditional parties. In France, Emmanuel Macron is speaking to the nation Monday night, but has virtually no chance of regaining any support from the enraged population. After four weeks of mass-strike demonstrations across the nation, Saturday saw 136,000 people on the streets with over 1,200 arrests. The Wall Street Journal reports, to its dismay, that Macron’s plan to impose vicious austerity on the French people is failing, and that “panic has spread through the ranks of his allies and supporters in the National Assembly.”

At the same time, the accelerating collapse of Deutsche Bank continues, as does the panic over the corporate debt bubble in the Western financial system. More voices are rising up to demand a return to the Glass-Steagall policies of Franklin Roosevelt. Zepp-LaRouche observed today that in 1971, when Nixon pulled the plug on the dollar and the Bretton Woods system, her husband Lyndon LaRouche warned that the inevitable result over time would be a new depression, war, and the re-emergence of fascism, unless his proposal for restoring the Hamiltonian American System were implemented. The collapse took longer than LaRouche had anticipated, she said, “because the enemy went for Empire—but Empires always collapse, as we see today.” She also said that the neo-conservative myth of “the end of history,” with universal “liberal democracy” of the British variety (i.e., Empire), has proven to be quite mistaken.

Indeed, there is plenty of history to be made. The New Silk Road and LaRouche’s Four Laws are there to be implemented, with a new global Renaissance, if the people prove themselves capable of rising to this great moment in history.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Larry Kudlow Insists Talks with China Are Going Well

Dec. 10 (EIRNS)—Appearing yesterday on Fox News Sunday with host Chris Wallace, Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, expressed optimism that U.S.-China trade talks are “on track,” and pointed to positive statements made last week by China’s Commerce Ministry as evidence of this. The Wall Street Journal quotes U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who is otherwise presented as a “hardliner” on the 90-day deadline to reach an agreement, saying that “if there’s a deal to be done, we’ll make it. The President wants us to make a deal.”

Kudlow reported that 35 Chinese agencies, along with China’s Supreme Court, are drawing up legislation to address intellectual property theft, and that China indicated in addition that it is prepared to purchase “large amounts” of U.S. services, as well as agricultural products, including soybeans, and also natural gas. It is also reportedly considering reducing tariffs on U.S. automobiles. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has indicated that China may make additional purchases of $1.2 trillion, the Wall Street Journal reported, stating, “if that is real, that will close the trade deficit.”

So, Kudlow remarked, there are “some very positive statements” out of Beijing. “When you piece it together … there’s a lot of good things out there.”

On Canada’s arrest, at the behest of the Justice Department, of Huawei’s Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, Kudlow underscored that President Donald Trump hadn’t known about it beforehand, and, after being informed, had “no reaction.” Wallace insisted, citing his “sources,” that Trump had been “livid” on learning the news, to which Kudlow replied he had not seen such a reaction, but hypothesized that, were he in a similar position, he, too, might be livid.

Otherwise, Kudlow emphasized that the case of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou would not affect trade negotiations—that it’s a law enforcement issue, unrelated to trade. It’s “outside my lane,” he said.

Wall Street Journal Bemoans the Fall of French President Macron’s Austerity Plans

Dec. 10 (EIRNS)—The Wall Street Journal let it all hang out today, whining that France is in a state of revolt against the deadly policies of President Macron.

“President Emmanuel Macron is facing unprecedented pressure,” authors Noemie Bisserbe and Stacy Meichtry write, “to roll back his overhauls of the French economy after a fourth consecutive weekend of Yellow Vest protests unleashed another torrent of rioting despite stepped-up security.” On Saturday, Dec. 8, they estimated, 136,000 protesters filled the streets around the nation, and that more than 1,000 people were arrested.

“Unable to control protesters through security measures,” writes the Journal, “Mr. Macron is now facing calls to placate the masses by reversing course on his signature agenda: making France more economically competitive through sweeping changes to its labor market, taxes, public spending and pension system.” The Journaladmits that the monthly income of the average rural family is no longer adequate to even pay its rent.

Worst of all, moans the Journal, Macron’s closest supporters are deserting him, as “panic has spread through the ranks of his allies and supporters in the National Assembly,” the lower house of Parliament. The writers quote one of his party’s Deputies, Patrick Vignal: “France isn’t a startup. People need empathy, dialogue.” They are calling on Macron to lift the minimum wage, giving pensioners some relief, and other measures to “put money in the pocket of middle-class and working-class people” before it is too late.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

‘Integrity Initiative’ Targets Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, in Pretext of Countering Russian ‘Fake News’

Dec. 10 (EIRNS)—A report in the Sunday, Dec. 9, edition of Scotland’s Daily Record and its sister publication Sunday Mail, reports that Integrity Initiative (II) is attacking Labour Party leader Jeremey Corbyn, and that it has received more than £2 million from the British Foreign Office, which is the usual conduit for MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence agency. The exposé has created outrage in the Labour Party, with demands for a probe to be launched against the Integrity Initiative, including how it came to receive £2 million pounds in government money and began targetting Jeremy Corbyn.

The Daily Record further reported that the Institute for Statecraft, listed as a “charity” based in Fife, Scotland, is the mother organization of the Integrity Initiative, which latter received £2 million from the government and is run by military intelligence specialists. The senior manager of Integrity Initiative is one Chris Donnelly, who, was Special Adviser for Central and Eastern European Affairs to the Secretary General of NATO in 1989-2003; and previous to that was an instructor at the Royal Military Academy in Russian and Soviet affairs for 20 years; the last 10 of those as head of the Soviet Research Centre; from 1970 to 1993 he served as a reserve officer in the British Territorial Army. He graduated Manchester University, according to his NATO biography.  The Integrity Initiative claims that its purpose is to counter Russian online propaganda by forming “clusters” of friendly journalists and “key influencers” throughout Europe who use social media to strike back against “disinformation,” according to the Daily Record.

The Daily Record found what they call “worrying evidence” that the organization’s official Twitter account has been used to attack Corbyn, his Labour Party, and other party officials. As an example they quote one of the tweets from a newspaper, that Integrity Initiative re-posted, reading: “What he [Corbyn] has done, wittingly or unwittingly, is work with the Kremlin agenda.” This violates the organization’s stated purpose of countering so-called fake news.

“It is simply outrageous that the clearly mis-named ‘Integrity Initiative’—funded by the Foreign Office to the tune of £2.25 million over the past two years—has routinely been using its Twitter feed to disseminate personal attacks and smears against the Leader of the Opposition, the Labour Party and Labour officials,” said MP Emily Thornberry, Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, in her statement.

Labour MP Chris Williamson tweeted: “We need decisive action to unearth precisely what is going on. This is unacceptable in any democracy.”

The Integrity Initiative’s spokesman Stephen Dalziel has said he is “not aware” of any Corbyn attacks on the official social media account. “I’m not the one who controls the Twitter account. If it was criticism of one of our politicians, then that shouldn’t be on there.”

Another leading Labour MP, Jon Trikett, tweeted in reply to Thornberry’s statement: “If it is true that there is a deep state, taxpayer funded operation against our party it is totally unacceptable and an explanation plus an enquiry must be conducted immediately.”

Through its Twitter account, the Integrity Initiative retweeted a journalist who attacked both Corbyn and Seumas Milne, Labour’s Executive Director of Strategy and Communications. The re-tweet read: “Just as he [Corbyn] supports the Russian bombardment of Syria, Seumas Milne supported the Russian slaughter of Afghanistan, which resulted in more than a million deaths.”

The daily reports that the Integrity Initiative gets support from anti-Putin “far-right” (i.e., neo-Nazi) Ukrainian politicians.

Significantly, it also revealed that the Integrity Initiative ran an international media and Twitter campaign against Col. Pedro Baños, a well-known Spanish commentator on strategic and military issues, which resulted in his being denied a position in the Madrid government.  The Integrity Initiative “Spanish cluster” went into action on hearing that the Spanish government wanted to appoint Baños as director of the national security department. Documents received by the Daily Record detailed how the Integrity Initiative alerted “key influencers” around Europe, who then launched an online campaign against Baños.

British Foreign Office Investigating Itself on Anti-Corbyn Smears, but Finds the Russians Did It!

Dec. 10 (EIRNS)—Britain’s Foreign Office Minister of State for Europe and the Americas Alan Duncan, has just announced with righteous indignation, that he was shocked to learn about the possibility that the Scotland-based, government-financed Institute for Statecraft’s (IfS) Integrity Initiative (II) had just issued “unfavorable views” of the Labour Party’s Jeremy Corbyn. How could such a thing happen?

It was the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, itself, that so generously financed the Integrity Initiative in 2017-2018, and will do so again next year, to assist British intelligence’s global campaign against Russia. Thus, Duncan’s report to the BBC Radio 4 “Today Program,” that he had “just learned” over the weekend about allegations of attacks on Corbyn for being a “dupe” of Russia, and had ordered an “immediate investigation,” ring just a tad hollow.

Duncan blustered that if there were “any kind of organization for which we are paying, which is involved in domestic politics in that way, I would totally condemn it.” He told the BBC that he had asked over the weekend for a report to be on his desk by 10:00 a.m. this morning on these allegations. He further stated that anti-Labour attacks by the Institute for Statecraft must stop, and furthermore, “I want to know why on earth it happened in the first place!!” Note, Duncan had previously responded to a written Parliamentary question on the subject, showing that in the 2017-2018 fiscal year, the FCO financed Integrity Initiative for £296,500 and that this fiscal year, the amount was raised to £2 million.

With some desperation, late this afternoon, according to the BBC, the FCO accused Russian state media—who else?—of trying to discredit the Institute for Statecraft. An FCO spokesperson said that the IfS was hacked several weeks ago and documents were “published and amplified by Kremlin news channels.” Now the National Cyber Security Center is investigating. The FCO insisted that the “Institute for Statecraft is independent of government and is non-partisan. We fund them on that basis.”

ECONOMY

Global Financiers Say Decarbonize Now, or Face ‘Climate-Induced’ Financial Crash Worse than 2008

Dec. 10 (EIRNS)—Some of the world’s largest financial speculators and financiers attending the COP24 UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland, have signed a Global Investment Statement, warning that unless the financial sector accepts climate change as a fact, as elaborated in the Oct. 7, 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, and advocates for total “decarbonization” and related measures, it will witness a catastrophic “climate-induced” financial crash far worse than 2008. (Note that the U.S., Russia, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia refused to endorse the fraudulent IPCC report at the COP24.)

Failing to acknowledge their own role in contributing to that 2008 crisis, these predators now propose to kill as many people as possible rather than recognize their system is dead.

Speaking from Katowice, asset managers and others of their ilk outlined to Britain’s Guardian today all manner of dire predictions of extraordinary losses that will result without elimination of all fossil fuel subsidies and imposition of major taxes on carbon. Taxes on carbon are currently $10 per ton, but these hyenas say they should be raised to $100 over the next decade or two, arguing that these can be done intelligently, not like French President Emmanuel Macron’s “botched” effort.

A representative of the Schroders investment firm bleated that there could be $23 trillion of global economic losses yearly without rapid action. Chris Newton, of IFM Investors, one of the 415 financial groups that signed the Global Investment Statement, lamented that there has been a “zombie-like response” from many financial groups to the “long-term nature of the challenge.” One of the Global Investment Statement’s key demands is to phase out coal-fired power stations around the world.

Reflecting the deluded state of mind—if not pure evil—of this crowd, is Lord Nicholas Stern of the London School of Economics, who predicted that “the low-carbon economy is the growth story of the 21st century and it is inclusive growth. Without that story, we would not have got the 2015 Paris agreement, but the story has grown stronger and stronger and is really compelling now.” Stern told the Guardian that President Donald Trump’s assertion that action on climate change was a jobs killer, is “dead wrong…. You don’t create jobs for the 21st century by trying to whistle up jobs from the 19th century.”

The low-carbon economy “presents numerous opportunities, and investors who ignore the changing world do so at their own peril,” warned Thomas DiNapoli of the $207 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund.

IMF Policy Ravages Argentina’s Once-Productive Industry

Dec. 10 (EIRNS)—“There is not a single sector that has been spared” from the crisis in Argentine industry, said Miguel Acevedo, president of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA). As reported by Página 12Dec. 7, the UIA leader said that whereas things are bad now, next year will be worse.

Hardest hit by President Mauricio Macri’s neo-liberal policies are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which account for 75% of employment in the country. Since Macri took over in December 2015, more than 9,000 SMEs have gone under, with 109,000 jobs lost. Some 25 SMEs close daily, and another 5,000 are expected to close in 2019, unless a dramatic change in economic policy occurs.

At the end of last week, leaders of several business organizations representing SMEs demonstrated in front of Congress, demanding emergency government action. Most of these companies are operating at 60% of installed capacity. For the sixth month in a row, industrial production plummeted in October, down by 6.8%. Declining purchasing power of workers and retirees due to the 40% annual inflation rate, across-the-board austerity measures, and wage gouging, has caused the internal market to shrink significantly. Buying even basic necessities is a challenge.

Add to this the report about to be published by Catholic University of Argentina Social Debt Observatory, that will show a 5% increase in poverty in the third quarter, pushing the national poverty rate to 33%—one in three Argentines is poor. The increase is attributed to high inflation and dramatic reduction in both formal and informal economic activity.

Decades ago, Argentina had a thriving, developing economy.

UN ‘Global Climate Migration Pact’ Masks Imperial Hand

Dec. 10 (EIRNS)—Heads of state from around the world are converging on Marrakesh, Morocco, today, for the signing of the UN’s “Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.” As innocently described by former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson in Time magazine today, the Compact “promises to be a crucial milestone in the development of a humane, efficient and durable system for managing migration, that recognizes that the mass movement of people is going to continue and that walls, fences and repression will never provide an acceptable solution.”

Premised on the lie that “climate change”—rising sea levels and increasing temperatures—will lead to global food and water shortages, thus reducing a growing segment of humanity to a lifetime of nomadic wandering, this seemingly humanitarian and wholly “voluntary and non-binding” compact, masks the genocidal hand of Empire.

It is the Empire which is immediately responsible for the majority of global migrant movements at this time. Further, the blame for everything from global terrorism to economic collapse can be laid at their feet, as a result of their usurious policies, whether it be debt-farming through the IMF, or drug/gang proliferation through trafficking or legalization, including “terrorism.”

There will, however, be several notable absences from 180 expected participants at this “Love Fest in the Desert.” Not attending—and thus earning special mention in the current issue of The Economist—will be the U.S., Israel, Australia, Hungary, Poland, Austria (which officially opposed the measure), Switzerland, and the Dominican Republic. The Netherlands, Belgium, and the Baltic states are in turmoil over this—the Belgian government just fell as a result of migrant-related political turmoil.

General Electric and Deutsche Bank, Twin Zombies

Dec. 10 (EIRNS)—If you have €8, you could buy today a Deutsche Bank share (7.75) or a General Electric one (6.14). These two financial giants are both technically bankrupt, and there is no solution in sight for either of them. GE has been already classified as “zombie company,” i.e., a company whose income is not enough to pay for interest on leveraged debt. Deutsche Bank has so greatly eroded its capital, that this is now lower than the Level 3 derivatives—mega-toxic assets—which DB has on its balance sheet.

Deutsche Bank shares have lost 50% from the beginning of the year, making DB now easy prey for a takeover. In Germany, it is rumored that the government is studying ways and means to avoid just that—a foreign takeover. One option would be a merger with Commerzbank, but bringing two sick men together does not make one healthy one. Another option is a government takeover, but this has to cope with EU rules that mandate a bail-in procedure first.

What is left is Glass-Steagall. This would also allow protecting the commercial banking sector from a systemic collapse unleashed by the insolvency of one of the two zombies.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Macron Tries To Appease French Population

Dec. 10 (EIRNS)—President Emmanuel Macron went on national TV this evening with a “mea culpa,” offering a number of concessions to the demands of the Yellow Vests (Gilets Jaunes), and clearly hoping this will be enough to appease the rage in the population and end the mass strike process. Whether he will succeed will be evident soon enough.

BBC reports that Macron condemned the violence but said the protesters’ anger was “deep, and in many ways legitimate.” He said many people were unhappy with living conditions and felt they “had not been listened to.” He said the problem goes back 40 years, that there had been “a malaise” of “villages and neighborhoods where public services have been diminishing, where living conditions had deteriorated,” and many people “whose status in society had not been sufficiently well recognized. In a cowardly way, we had got used to it and everything seemed to suggest that we had forgotten them.”

Having deflected the crisis to times past, he nonetheless acknowledged: “I assume my share of the situation—I may have given you the feeling I have other concerns and priorities. I know some of you have been hurt by my words.”

His pledges: He will meet mayors from all the regions of France, and encourage “unprecedented debate.” The minimum wage would increase by €100 per month beginning in 2019. A planned tax increase for low-income pensioners would be cancelled, overtime pay would no longer be taxed, and employers would be encouraged to pay a tax-free year-end bonus to employees. He rejected another demand—to reinstate a tax on the wealthy which he had removed soon after taking office. He claimed that this was needed to “create jobs.”

He said: “We must tackle the question of immigration,” and urged the nation to come together “in order to take into account climate change and other challenges.”

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

New Momentum in Fusion Energy Research Should Get Federal Support

Dec. 10 (EIRNS)—Each year, Steve Dean, president of Fusion Power Associates, organizes a conference to review the status and advances, and future plans in fusion energy research, internationally. Dean established Fusion Power Associates in 1980, after a leadership career in the government fusion program.

This year’s conference was notable for two interrelated reasons. Dean reported that when attendance reached 100, he had to turn people away, because that was all that the room could hold. Last year, he said, he had about 80 registrants, and some 60 the year before—clearly an increasing interest in fusion research.

The substantial increase in funding over this year by the Congress undoubtedly helped, but whereas much of those attending for years have been the gray-haired leaders of the various fusion programs, this year, there has been an influx of younger, enthusiastic scientists and engineers. These are from the privately-funded start-ups, which according to one report, have raised $1 billion in private funds.

Although it is regarded as unlikely that the majority, or perhaps any, of the private companies will reach the goal of commercial fusion, most are carrying out valuable research, trying new, innovative approaches, and even picking up fruitful ideas that were never fully pursued due to funding cutoffs. These bring new ideas and enthusiasm into fusion research. In general, the new, small, private fusion companies have no illusions as to how difficult their task is, and have said outright that when they reach a certain level and size of experiment, they will need government support.

A new appointee to the Department of Energy Office of Science made very short impromptu remarks that were upbeat, telling the fusion scientists that their work “can change the world.” Perhaps this indicates a sea change in the Trump Administration’s view of fusion, and will result in an increase in funding, rather than a cut, as was the case with last year’s, Fiscal 2019 budget request.