FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 2019

Volume 6, Number 52

EIR Daily Alert Service

P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390

• Zepp-LaRouche in Milan: ‘What Italy Is Doing, Right Now, Is of the Greatest Historic Importance’
• Port-City Palermo May Become a Hub of China-Italy New Silk Road
• Greek Daily Tells Brussels, U.S., Other Critics To ‘Put Their Money Where Their Mouth Is’
• Russia and U.S. Still Enjoy Cooperation in Space Science, as Soyuz Launches Crew to ISS
  
• U.S. Agrees To Supply and Set Up Six Nuclear Reactors in India
• Four Nations To Promote Caspian Sea-Black Sea Multimodal Corridor Project
• AFL-CIO Labor Federation Slams ‘Green New Deal’ as Threat to Jobs, Living Standards
• Louisiana Looks to Increased ‘Win-Win’ Chinese Investment
• Green Genocidalist Brunschweiger Insults Mothers as ‘Mombies’
• French Delegation Arrives in Crimea on Fifth Anniversary of Reunification With Russia
• Marathon Round of Talks Between U.S. and Taliban Have Ended, Showing ‘Real Strides’
  
  

EDITORIAL

Zepp-LaRouche in Milan: ‘What Italy Is Doing, Right Now, Is of the Greatest Historic Importance’

March 14 (EIRNS)—Addressing a conference on “Italy and the New Silk Road,” in Milan yesterday, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche put on the table a strategic perspective for the rapid unification of now-disintegrating Europe around its participation in the development of the Eurasian continent and the great Belt and Road Initiative, a move which she proposed could provide the critical factor in shifting the world away from the looming danger of thermonuclear extinction.

The potential for this shift “is growing more rapidly than you would think,” she told the seminar. “My prognosis [is that] the perspective of unifying Europe, not necessarily under the EU bureaucracy, but in the conception of de Gaulle, more like a ‘Europe of the Fatherlands,’ uniting with China, with Russia, with the Belt and Road Initiative, the Eurasian Economic Union, and European countries, to cooperate fully in this new paradigm is absolutely there.”

“That is also the only way Europe can impact the strategic situation,” Zepp-LaRouche added. She elaborated:

“Because if you had a united Europe of the Fatherlands cooperating with the Belt and Road Initiative, including Germany and France, that would be the best way to get the United States to also give up their opposition—which I said, is not President Donald Trump himself, but these other forces—and get the United States to join the new paradigm.  And I think this is the only hope we have to avoid a catastrophe where we would end in World War III with nuclear weapons, meaning the extinction of civilization.

“So in that sense, what Italy is doing right now, is of the greatest historical importance; because Italy, with what you are doing, with the Memorandum of Understanding [on the Belt and Road], but also with the joint ventures with China in Africa, can become the role model for all the other European countries.”

The British Empire and its neo-conservative minions will be driven wild both by what Zepp-LaRouche is proposing, and when and where she proposed it. She is, after all, a German political leader, as well as the head of the International Schiller Institute, and knows whereof she speaks about Germany.

This initiative comes as Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom has just demonstrated before the entire world, with Prime Minister’s failed Brexit votes in Parliament, that it is dysfunctional, and disintegrating.

As they scramble at home, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, whose recently-deceased husband, Lyndon LaRouche, the British Monarchy still hate and fear as its leading opponent of the last half-century, then appears in Italy, addressing a conference co-sponsored by the LaRouche-associated organization in Italy, MoviSol, and the state legislature of the Lombardy Region. Furthermore, the first speaker to address conference was Italian Under Secretary of the Ministry of Economic Development and co-chair of the government’s Task Force China, Michele Geraci, on whom London’s press empire had just focused their invective as the alleged architect of Italy joining the Belt and Road.

And this occurs, one week before Chinese President Xi Jinping visits Italy from March 22-24, where he is expected to sign a Memorandum of Understanding on Italy’s participation in the Belt and Road Initiative.

London and the wild-eyed neo-conservatives in Washington, D.C. have threatened the Italian government with ruin and blackballing from “their club,” should it proceed on that MOU, yet Italy is, thus far, sticking to its guns—a stance which will embolden the rest of Europe, too.

The Southern and Eastern nations of Europe are holding firm on looking to the New Paradigm emerging in Asia as their great hope; the Greeks pointing out that the European Union and Western financial institutions ranting against European ties with China offer no investment themselves; Portugal inviting a member of the Advisory Committee for China’s State Council on Poverty Alleviation to give four conferences in three days in that country this week on how China is eliminating poverty.

Now the Belt and Road is knocking on the doors of France and Germany.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Port-City Palermo May Become a Hub of China-Italy New Silk Road

March 14 (EIRNS)—Industry website PortSEurope provided some background today on China’s interest in the Sicilian port and regional capital of Palermo, which President Xi Jinping is scheduled to visit during his March 22-24 visit to Italy. The port, which handles cargo and cruise ships, and has a Fincantieri SpA shipyard, and is located in the northwest of Sicily, on the Gulf of Palermo in the Tyrrhenian Sea, in the middle of the Mediterranean.

“Palermo-based Istmo srl has been working on a plan which detailed how investment could increase the port’s handling capacity from a current level of around 10,000 TEU [twenty-foot equivalent unit] to 16 million TEU, which is higher than Rotterdam’s current TEU traffic,” PortSEurope reported. To do so requires an estimated €5 billion ($5.67 billion) investment.

A delegation of Chinese officials met with the Institute of Political, Economic and Social Studies (EURISPES) to discuss how Palermo port could become a hub on the New Silk Road through this investment.

On March 13 PortSEurope had reported that an unnamed Shanghai-based investment fund is interested in participating in the construction of a large freight transport hub in Palermo.

Greek Daily Tells Brussels, U.S., Other Critics To ‘Put Their Money Where Their Mouth Is’

March 14 (EIRNS)—The Greek liberal daily Kathimerini, in an op-ed countering criticism of Athens’ good relations with China, told Washington, Berlin, and Paris to “put their money where their mouth is.” Commentator Alexis Papachelas was referring to American and European complaints about China’s economic involvement with Greece, but also about Chinese activity in Italy, Portugal, and several other Balkan countries.

Papachelas points out that China decided to invest in Greece despite its crisis, employing a lot of patience as well as capital, writing, “This is something that Washington, Berlin or Paris cannot match. When the Greek Prime Minister called his European counterparts asking them to send investors to put money into big projects, their response was typically, ‘That is not how we operate.’ ”

“Greece has every interest in trying to attract investment from anywhere it can,” Papachelas argued. “It is, after all, a member of the bloc, a fact which guarantees basic rules of transparency and competition for every privatization and major project. Greece is also an organic part of the West, which means it is extremely unlikely that it will become a satellite state of China or some other great power in the near future.

“As for those who complain about the situation, they’d better abide by the old saying and put their money where their mouth is,” he said.

Papachelas is in general critical of the ruling Syriza government, but on cooperation with China, there is a broad consensus across political lines in Greece.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Russia and U.S. Still Enjoy Cooperation in Space Science, as Soyuz Launches Crew to ISS

March 14 (EIRNS)—Despite the many disputes, cooperation between the United States and Russia in space continues. Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin and NASA’s Associate Administrator of the Human Exploration and Operations, William Gerstenmaier, discussed space cooperation between the two countries, Roscosmos press service told TASS today.

“The conversation took place yesterday. They talked about the future of the International Space Station and further cooperation plans, pointing out that the NASA and Roscosmos groups continue to work and discuss cooperation and current pressing issues,” Roscosmos said. Roscosmos and NASA “hear and understand” each other as far as the future of the ISS goes, but no final decision has been made yet whether to extend the station’s operation as “everything is under consideration.”

This evening, Rogozin and Gerstenmaier together watched the successful launch of the Soyuz-FG carrier rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which will deliver Russia’s Alexei Ovchinin and NASA’s Nick Hague and Christina Koch to the ISS tomorrow.

Furthermore, Russian and U.S. scientists are in talks on the creation of a lunar navigation system similar to GLONASS and GPS, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Yury Balega told TASS. “In the framework of studying the Earth’s natural satellite, U.S. colleagues suggested developing a joint navigation system around the Moon, similar to GPS or GLONASS, so that all participants in Moon exploration projects can use it,” Balega said during a visit to NASA headquarters.

The RAS delegation, led by its President Alexander Sergeyev, is currently in the United States on a working visit, where they visited NASA and also signed an agreement with the U.S. National Academy of Sciences on cooperation in the sphere of scientific, engineering, and medical research.

Balega reported that the delegation discussed programs for exploring the Moon and Venus with NASA. “Our American partners said that they consider the Venus program [to be] predominantly Russian-led and think that Russia’s contribution to it should thus stand at 70-80%. We talked about different options of exploring Venus’s atmosphere, including launching a flying apparatus—a drone—into the high layers of Venus’s atmosphere, in order to study its chemical composition,” Balega said. He further said that “it is very important that we agreed to hold two brainstorming sessions on both Venus and the Moon in Moscow. The session on the Moon will take place in the Spring of 2020, and the one on Venus—in the Fall of this year.”

U.S. Agrees To Supply and Set Up Six Nuclear Reactors in India

March 14 (EIRNS)—The United States and India on March 13 agreed to strengthen security and civil nuclear cooperation, including building six U.S. nuclear power plants in India, the two countries said in a joint statement. The agreement came after two days of talks in Washington.

The United States under President Donald Trump has been looking to sell more energy products to India, the world’s third-biggest buyer of oil. The talks involved Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale and Andrea Thompson, the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.

“They committed to strengthen bilateral security and civil nuclear cooperation, including the establishment of six U.S. nuclear power plants in India,” the joint statement said, according to the New York Times report.

The United States and India have discussed cooperating on nuclear reactor technology for more than a decade, but liability rules of the Indian government have slowed those talks. Most international nuclear projects require the costs of any accident to be borne by the operator of the plant, rather than the maker of the reactor technology. India, though, places liability on the shoulders of those behind the technology.

Westinghouse has been negotiating to build reactors in India for years, but progress has been slow. Last April, Westinghouse received strong support from U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry for its India project, which envisaged the building of six AP1000 Pressurized Water Reactors in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

Four Nations To Promote Caspian Sea-Black Sea Multimodal Corridor Project

March 14 (EIRNS)—Last week, Georgia, together with Romania, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan, signed a declaration for the promotion of a multimodal corridor for the transport of goods between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, called the Caspian Sea-Black Sea International Transport Corridor project.

The project was launched by Romania and Turkmenistan to create an intermodal transport route for maritime, river, road, and rail freight transport between Central and Northern Europe and the Southern Caucasus and Central Asia, with the prospect of connecting to the Asia-Pacific region. Both countries have modern multimodal ports which, by and large, stand idle.

The corridor will combine the services offered by the ports of Constanta Romania; Poti, Georgia; Baku, Azerbaijan; and Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan. The new transport route is being created on the basis of the Trans-Caspian (Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey) and Lapis Lazuli (Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan) corridors.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

AFL-CIO Labor Federation Slams ‘Green New Deal’ as Threat to Jobs, Living Standards

March 14 (EIRNS)—Ten major AFL-CIO unions sent a letter March 8 to Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who are the co-sponsors of the “Green New Deal” resolution in the two Houses of Congress.

The crux of the letter says, “We welcome the call for labor rights and dialogue with labor, but the Green New Deal resolution is far too short on specific solutions that speak to the jobs of our members and the critical sectors of our economy. It is not rooted in an engineering-based approach and makes promises that are not achievable or realistic.

“We will not accept proposals that could cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families. We will not stand by and allow threats to our members’ jobs and their families’ standard of living to go unanswered.

“We are ready to discuss these issues in a responsible way, for we all recognize that doing nothing is not an option…”

Louisiana Looks to Increased ‘Win-Win’ Chinese Investment

March 14 (EIRNS)—China has been investing in Louisiana liquefied natural gas (LNG), petrochemicals, and pipe making, and has become the state’s top export market and its 7th-largest source of imports.

Louisiana Secretary of Economic Development Don Pierson told Xinhua in a March 5 interview and in a short video that his state has a “very strong partnership” with China.

“We’re good trading partners and we have also begun to have some very significant investment in our state, coming to us from China…. We think they are doing a great job, and we hope to introduce more Chinese companies to Louisiana. If they can establish their operations in Louisiana and export products that are needed back in China, that’s a win-win scenario,” Pierson declared.

Paul Aucoin, Executive Director of the Port of South Louisiana, the largest port in the United States by tonnage of total trade, also spoke to Xinhua on March 7 of the importance of trade with China for securing jobs of the 30,000 people employed in that port. Our trading relationship is important for the whole United States, and for China, as well, he says in a Xinhua New China video posted on March 12.

“My hope is that we de-escalate tensions and work together for the benefit of everybody,” Aucoin stressed.

COLLAPSING WESTERN SYSTEM

Green Genocidalist Brunschweiger Insults Mothers as ‘Mombies’

March 14 (EIRNS)—Verena Brunschweiger, author of the outrageous new book in Germany, Child Free Instead of Childless: A Manifesto, which argue for not having children as a means of population reduction, alleging that each new child burdens world climate with 58 tons of CO2, called pregnant mothers “reactionary.”  Charging that many women are obsessed with having a baby, the would-be German edition of Alexandria “Occasional Cortex” Ocasio-Cortez insulted mothers as being “mombies”—mother zombies—in an interview with Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) German press agency yesterday.

DPA’s coverage of her interview also reports a similarly outrageous survey by the Max-Planck Institute of Demographic Research at Rostock, in which Mikko Myrskylä claims to have found that children make parents unhappy; that people without children are happier in general. The positive effect on parents having babies may last for a few years, but then fades away, he states, as if the purpose for having children were entertainment.

ENDING THE STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

French Delegation Arrives in Crimea on Fifth Anniversary of Reunification with Russia

March 14 (EIRNS)—A delegation of French politicians began a visit to Crimea last night to attend celebrations marking the fifth anniversary of Crimea’s reunification with Russia, according to TASS. They were accompanied from Moscow by Leonid Slutsky, chair of the State Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee.

The 12-person delegation is led by Thierry Mariani, co-chair of the French-Russian Dialogue Association, and they will stay in Crimea until March 16. Former and current members of the French National Assembly, and representatives of municipal authorities, including the mayors of Brienne-le-Château in north-central France and Biguglia on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, make up the delegation.

“It is a very significant visit, some sort of recognition. Let it be within people’s diplomacy, but it is the recognition of Crimea,” the senior local leader Alexei Chernyak who met the delegation at the airport told TASS.

Marathon Round of Talks Between U.S. and Taliban Have Ended, Showing ‘Real Strides’

March 14 (EIRNS)—After 16 days of negotiations between the United States and the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, the session has come to an end with “real strides” being made but without an agreement on U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad saying on March 12. This was the fifth round of talks and by far the longest one.

Following the end of this round of talks, Khalilzad said in a four-part tweet that “Peace requires agreement on four issues: counter-terrorism assurances, troop withdrawal, intra-Afghan dialogue, and a comprehensive ceasefire. In January talks, we ‘agreed in principle’ on these four elements. We’re now ‘agreed in draft’ on the first two.”

Khalilzad began his tweet saying, “Just finished a marathon round of talks with the Taliban in Doha. The conditions for peace have improved. It’s clear all sides want to end the war. Despite ups and downs, we kept things on track and made real strides.”

Meanwhile, the Taliban said in a statement that they and the United States had deep discussions on two issues agreed on in January. The group said no deal has been signed by the negotiating teams and that they will come together after consulting their leaderships about the current developments.

Afghanistan’s TOLONews reported that a couple of U.S. bases are expected to remain in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, a meeting between a number of Afghan politicians and the Taliban, which was expected to be held in the next two weeks, has been delayed.