MONDAY, MARCH 11, 2019

Volume 6, Number 48

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

• Why the U.S. Must Reject Britain’s Violent Geopolitical Hostility to Russia and China
• Second Belt and Road Forum To Be Held in Beijing in Late April
• The True Magnitude of China’s Poverty Reduction Achievements and Plans
• Financial Times Again Attacks Italy and Minister Geraci for Lining Up With New Silk Road
• The Green Brainwashing Is Deep Within the U.S. Military
• Greenpeace Co-Founder Patrick Moore: Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal to Eradicate 80% of Humanity
• U.S, Infectious Diseases Surging in Public Health Decline, Include Syphilis, Typhus, and Measles
• February Employment Report Spreads Confusion, But Shows Slowdown
• Elliott Abrams Vows to Inflict Worse Pain on Venezuela-Was Giant Power Outage the First Step?
• President Trump ‘Honored’ by Judge Ellis Remarking There Was ‘No Collusion With Russia’
• Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow Urges Backing for Trump’s Climate Science Panel

EDITORIAL

Why the U.S. Must Reject Britain’s Violent Geopolitical Hostility to Russia and China

March 10 (EIRNS)—“If you keep insisting that the world is just a unipolar world, and that Russia and China are the big enemies and competitors and opponents and so forth, I think this is why we are really in a much greater war danger than most people have an inkling of,” Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated emphatically in her March 7 weekly strategic webcast. “The strategic outcome of this historical period will depend on our ability to move the United States away from geopolitics, and to move it into accordance with this idea of being part of this one humanity,” Zepp-LaRouche stated.

President Donald Trump is hated by the British for just this reason—that he has threatened to work with Russia and China for the benefit of all mankind—but he has been significantly hamstrung in those efforts by the plot to topple his Presidency. Trump has now further enraged the British by announcing the establishment of a Presidential Committee on Climate Science, to subject climate change allegations to actual scientific scrutiny, as opposed to media-induced hysteria. The response has been to try to demonize science itself, much as Russia and China are being demonized, by trying to impose a virtual gag order on any reasoned discussion of the matter, on the grounds that it would constitute a threat to national security.

The unipolar world in any case no longer exists, Zepp-LaRouche stressed. Russia has placed an immovable object of sorts in the way of the British geopolitical efforts to use the U.S. to threaten thermonuclear war against Russia and China: that is, Russia’s surprise announcement on March 1, 2018 of military capabilities based on new physical principles, for which the West currently has no rejoinder. And China has breathed new life and optimism for the future into an otherwise dying planet, with the dramatic success of the Belt and Road Initiative and its own epochal accomplishments in poverty reduction. “This is very clearly the future of civilization,” Zepp-LaRouche stated.

In its poverty reduction achievements, China is performing a service for the entire human species that has not been adequately understood. By lifting over 800 million people out of poverty over four decades, they have taken over 10% of the entire human race and transformed them from being an entropic drag on Mankind’s overall productivity, and turned them into an anti- entropic force of unending progress for the entire human species. Add to this what China’s role is in contributing to doing the same in Africa, Asia and other continents, and the enormity of this process begins to come into focus.

China has done this not by handouts to the poor, but by using science, high technology, and great infrastructure projects which bring all of these advances to the entire nation, to build permanent progress into their future.

Clearly, the United States cannot afford not to join the Belt and Road Initiative immediately, and President Trump must take advantage of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s likely trip to the United States in April to advance along that road, and commit to sending a high-level American delegation to the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which will be held in Beijing in late April.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Second Belt and Road Forum To Be Held in Beijing in Late April

March 10 (EIRNS)—China’s Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi gave a press conference on March 8, in which he presented China’s plans for the upcoming second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, or BRF. He said that it was China’s most important diplomatic activity of the year, and that President Xi Jinping will deliver the keynote address.

According to Xinhua, Wang said the event “will have more foreign heads of state and government than the previous forum [on May 14-15, 2017] and thousands of delegates from over a hundred countries are expected to attend. It will include a series of events, such as leaders’ round table, high-level meeting, thematic forum, CEO conference, under the theme of ‘Belt and Road Cooperation, Shaping a Brighter Shared Future.’ ”

Wang also stated that “China will build consensus with parties on high quality cooperation following the principle of consultation, cooperation and shared benefits; champion an open, transparent and inclusive approach to Belt and Road cooperation, and strive for green and sustainable development. Meanwhile, China and the participating countries will seek a greater complementarity between the BRI and their development strategies.”

He concluded, “We have reasons to hope and believe the second BRF will be a greater success” than the first one.

The True Magnitude of China’s Poverty Reduction Achievements and Plans

March 10 (EIRNS)—The statement issued March 7 by Liu Yongfu, director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, provided the following information, as per a Xinhua wire on the matter:

Year    # Lifted Out of Poverty     Remaining Poor

2012                                                        99 million
2017         [NA]                                      30 million
2018         13.4 million                           16.6 million
2019         10.6 million                             6 million
2020           6 million                                0

Part, but only part, of the goal of ending poverty in China is to bring the minimum annual income up to 4,000 yuan ($600). That converts closely to the same monetary parameter used by the World Bank internationally, which is $1.90 per day. But China has more than a monetary parameter that they are working on in addressing poverty: They are stressing basic physical-economic metrics. “People shouldn’t have to worry about being able to afford food or basic clothing, and their needs in terms of medical services, education and housing should be met,” Liu said. Success so far has meant to “develop local industries, improve infrastructure, enhance public services and protect the environment, benefitting not only those formerly living in want, but all residents in rural regions,” he declared.

This last idea—that ending poverty benefits not just those lifted out of that condition, but the entire region or society—is key. Poverty, like unemployment, is an entropic drag on all of society, in fact on the entire human species: It is wasted potential productivity of the worst kind. Lifting people out of poverty into, first, minimally acceptable physical economic levels, and then into higher standards of living and productivity—which is Xi Jinping’s stated medium-term strategy on the “poverty” issue—means shifting that proportion of the population from being an entropic drag, to being an anti-entropic contribution to society as a whole.

With that in mind, consider what it means for the entire human species for China to have lifted 800 million people out of poverty over four decades. That is more than 10% of the entire human population on the planet, that has become a new anti-entropic force that is being unleashed! It is also certain that when China succeeds in entirely eliminating poverty in 2020, this will unleash a new wave of cultural optimism both in China and internationally, which will be a force as significant as the ending of poverty as such in the construction of a New Paradigm.

Financial Times Again Attacks Italy and Minister Geraci for Lining Up with New Silk Road

March 8 (EIRNS)—The British Empire’s Financial Times ran another attack on Italy and targetting government official Michele Geraci today. In an article entitled “How Italy’s Ruling Class Has Warmed To China Investments,” the City of London mouthpiece quotes Finance Minister Giovanni Tria, who had said in December that the Belt and Road is a train that Italy cannot afford to miss (see EIR Daily Alert, Dec. 12, 2018), and thus, wrote the {FT, “This week Italy indicated it was ready to jump on board that train and become the first G7 country to endorse formally China’s global investment push, raising alarm in the U.S. and Brussels.”

Undersecretary of the Economic Development Ministry Michele Geraci is characterized as “Italy’s Sinophile undersecretary” who is the mastermind of the pro-Belt and Road policy: “Mr. Geraci, who works at the ministry led by Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio, is seen as a crucial figure in Rome’s pivot towards Beijing. He led a government taskforce launched in August intended to promote Sino-Italian relations and has been unabashed in his view that China can solve many of Italy’s problems.”

Among other things, the FT dictates U.S. policy, that Italy’s “Signing up to the MOU [memorandum of understanding] would undermine U.S. pressure on China over trade.”

The FT recruits Anglophile agents such as former Italian Prime Ministers Romano Prodi and Enrico Letta. “Mr. Prodi, who has held academic positions in China to foster Sino-European relations, told theFinancial Times that he objected to the unilateral move by Rome’s populists to board the BRI train.” And former Prime Minister Enrico Letta, now dean of Sciences Po University in Paris, told FT, “But China will find easier entry at a moment of political and economic weakness [in Italy] and see a great opportunity.”

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

The Green Brainwashing Is Deep within the U.S. Military

March 8 (EIRNS)—The depths to which green ideology has penetrated political life in the U.S. was evident in an open letter to President Donald Trump released March 5 by the American Security Project, part of the Center for Climate and Security, and signed by 58 retired flag grade officers and defense-related analysts, as well as Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. Titled, “Letter to the President of the United States: 58 Senior Military and National Security Leaders Denounce NSC Climate Panel,” it instructs Trump that he must not form a committee to examine the science of climate change, since such an investigation is inherently anti-scientific!

“We write to you as former U.S. national security leaders to offer our support to our uniformed military, civilian national security professionals, and members of the scientific community, who across the past four Administrations have found that climate change is a threat to U.S. national security.

“Climate change is real, it is happening now, it is driven by humans, and it is accelerating. The overwhelming majority of scientists agree: less than 0.2% of peer-reviewed climate science papers dispute these facts. In this context, we are deeply concerned by reports that National Security Council officials are considering forming a committee to dispute and undermine military and intelligence judgments on the threat posed by climate change.

“This includes second-guessing the scientific sources used to assess the threat, such as the rigorously peer-reviewed National Climate Assessment, and applying that to national security policy. Imposing a political test on reports issued by the science agencies, and forcing a blind spot onto the national security assessments that depend on them, will erode our national security. It is dangerous to have national security analysis conform to politics. Our officials’ job is to ensure that we are prepared for current threats and future contingencies. We cannot do that if the scientific studies that inform our threat assessments are undermined….

“We support the science-driven patriots in our national security community who have rightly seen addressing climate change as a threat reduction issue, not a political one, since 1989…. A committee designed to undermine the many years of work they have done will weaken our ability to respond to real threats, putting American lives at risk.”

Greenpeace Co-Founder Patrick Moore: Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal To Eradicate 80% of Humanity

March 8 (EIRNS)—Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, who left the organization, among other things, over its opposition to nuclear power, has criticized New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her “Green New Deal” legislation, Sputnik reported in an interview with Moore. Moore elaborated his opposition to the anti-population element in the Green New Deal in his March 8 interview:

“I suppose my main objection is the effective elimination of 80% of the world’s energy would likely eliminate 80% of the world’s people in the end. I mean, just growing food, for example—how would we grow food for the world’s people without tractors and trucks, and all of the other machinery that is required to deliver food, especially to the inner cities of large centers like Moscow, Shanghai and New York City? How would we get the food to the stores? It’s symptomatic of the fact that people who live in cities just take it for granted that this food appears there for them in supermarkets in great variety, healthy food to keep them alive when they couldn’t possibly grow it for themselves with such dense populations. And if, in fact, fossil fuels were banned, agricultural productivity would fall dramatically and people would starve by the millions. So, that is just a little bit of why I think it’s a ridiculous proposal….

“I think a lot of people are out of touch in modern society. As I said, people just take it for granted [that] … food production and the production of all of our civilization’s needs, especially the big infrastructure of our cities and all of the transportation systems all require a tremendous amount of energy, both in their construction and in their operation. Between buildings and transportation, this amounts to at least 75% of all the energy that is used in the world, particularly for transportation.

“More than 90% of all transportation is based on fossil fuels, particularly petroleum or oil, and oil is, indeed, the largest amount of energy of any single source that we use in our daily lives. So, people need to educate themselves about these things because if they are taken in by this Green New Deal…. The truth is, AOC is not behind this, she is the front person for it, she is very attractive, she’s fairly well-spoken, but she doesn’t know anything about these subjects in particular, she was a bartender before she became a member of Congress…. [T]his is not her idea alone, she is just the front person speaking on behalf of this crazy idea.”

U.S. Infectious Diseases Surging in Public Health Decline, Include Syphilis, Typhus, and Measles

March 9 (EIRNS)—A surge in infectious diseases, directly associated with poverty, social breakdown, and lack of modern ratios of public health and medical services, are occurring more frequently in the United States, a companion to the horrible rise in U.S. death rates from drug overdose and suicide. Overall, the rate of incidence of infectious diseases of all kinds—from food-borne to respiratory—fell in the U.S. over the decades of the 20th century, but after year 2000, as “casino economics” set in ever more viciously, the rate of infectious diseases started climbing.

• Sexually-transmitted diseases and drugs. Syphilis rates nationally are setting records, after the disease was once nearly eradicated. Timely use of antibiotics can successfully treat the disease, but without that, permanent damage and death are likely. The U.S. incidence of syphilis rose 73% overall for the five-year period 2013-2017. For women, the incidence jumped 156% over that period. The highest rates are in California, Nevada, and Louisiana. Public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concur that this syphilis resurgence relates to drug use, and in particular to the rise in methamphetamines. A CDC analysis of the cases over 2013-2017, shows that one-third of the syphilis sufferers had used methamphetamines within the year. Fresno County, California has the highest rate of congenital syphilis in the nation, where an estimated two-thirds of mothers afflicted with syphilis were drug-users.

• Typhus. This bacterial disease carried by insect vectors (fleas, lice, chiggers), causing fever, body ache, rash, and other constitutional symptoms, was once so uncommon in the U.S. that it was delisted by the CDC in 1994. But then, after reappearing in the 1990s in California, it now is showing up again in a pattern across the southern border states, from southern California to southeast Texas, extending into the Florida Gulf Coast. Murine, or flea-borne typhus is epidemic now in Los Angeles, associated there with homeless street dwellers, surrounded by trash, human waste and rats. The recent high-profile case is Deputy City Attorney Liz Greenwood, who fell ill with typhus last month, traced to rats in L.A. City Hall. But other animals are host to the infected fleas, from opossums to cats, which are now conveying the disease to Long Beach and other outer communities.

In Texas, the number of flea-borne typhus cases rose from 30 a year, to 519 a year in the 14-year period from 2003-2017. Hidalgo County has been number one in incidence, with 99 cases over that period. Harris County, where Houston is the main city, is second, with 71 cases.

• Measles. There are now several measles outbreak locations in the U.S., reflecting the vulnerability to infection, when it is introduced from outside, to a community with low vaccination rates. The CDC reported this week, that the year 2019 is set to be the worst year for measles cases in 17 years. Over January and February, more than 200 cases have been reported, with outbreaks in 11 states.

Indigenous measles was declared to have been eliminated in North America, after the last endemic case was reported in 2002. But wherever the microbe strikes in a low-vaccination community, the disease can easily take hold. The pathogen is exceptionally transmissible. It remains infectious for two hours after the human carrier exits. Many state legislatures are now tightening requirements for waivers from vaccinations, which had come to be granted loosely for “philosophical” objections to vaccination.

February Employment Report Spreads Confusion, But Shows Slowdown

March 7 (EIRNS)—Headlines on the Labor Department’s employment report for February, announcing creation of just 20,000 new jobs, are spreading confusion originating with the Bureau of Labor Statistics itself. But it is clear, as other data are suggesting, that the U.S. real economy is going into another decline.

Fake news is announced here by the simple juxtaposition of the “very adjusted figures”: 20,000 job growth in February following 313,000 job growth in January!—when in fact, some 3 million jobs actually disappeared in January as they do every year. In addition, the February claimed result from the survey of employers is contradicted by the Household Survey which claimed reasonably good employment growth.

But the unadjusted figures showed that year-to-year growth in employment, which had been about 2.7 million over the last months of 2018, has fallen below 2.5 million, and productive employment, which had been at about 650,000 annual growth, has fallen to about 550,000.

The overall 2.5 million figure is still easily high enough to absorb new entrants to the labor force; but, it has become clearer just how huge the hole in the labor force really became during two decades of spreading addiction and despair following upon deindustrialization. Despite a claimed increase of about 8 million in employment over the past three years, there are still just under 4 million eligible American workers who “want work” but have not looked for it for more than a year—in addition to the 1.4 million “marginally attached” and discouraged workers, the 4.3 million forced part-time workers, and the 6.24 million “officially” unemployed workers.

Headline reports on the rise in wages are also misleading: Whilehourly average wages have risen 3.4% from February 2018, the average work week has dropped slightly and so the average weeklywage is up by 3.1% from February 2018—2.9% for production and non-supervisory employees. The one-month weekly wage increase, from January to February 2019, is just 0.1% according to the report.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Elliott Abrams Vows To Inflict Worse Pain on Venezuela—Was Giant Power Outage the First Step?

March 8 (EIRNS)—Testifying on March 7 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, presided over by mad-dog Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Special Envoy for Venezuela, Iran-Contra felon Elliott Abrams vowed that the U.S. intends to achieve a “peaceful political transition” in Venezuela, not through military intervention, but by inflicting so much economic pain on the country that President Nicolas Maduro will be forced to resign.

This is what Eric Farnsworth, head of the Rockefeller family’s Council of the Americas, proposed in a Feb. 25 National Interestarticle, when he said the only way to overthrow Maduro is to squeeze Venezuela, “like the anacondas that inhabit Venezuela’s waters.”

Abrams laid out a strategy of greater diplomatic and economic pressure applied through more sanctions, targetting foreign banks that might be “assisting” the Maduro government in hiding state assets, and “working with the international community to freeze the regime’s bank accounts across the globe.” Customers for Venezuelan oil “are dwindling,” he gloated, and said he was sure these measures would make it impossible for the government “to sustain itself.”

Is the unprecedented power outage that occurred in Venezuela yesterday at 5:00 p.m., hitting almost the entire country at once and affecting 30 million people, the kind of pain that Abrams et al. are talking about? While it’s true that the Maduro government has failed to invest in, and maintain, the country’s energy infrastructure, this massive blackout was almost certainly sabotage. Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez charged that the blackout was due to a “technological and cyber” attack on the huge Guri hydroelectric complex in Bolivar state, which supplies electricity for the entire country. Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, TeleSUR reported, blamed opposition-linked “right-wing extremist groups” and charged that the “rotten hands” of U.S. politicians such as Sen. Marco Rubio had contributed to creating the conditions for such sabotage.

The blackout shut down the country. Workers were told to stay home, and schools, businesses, and transportation were closed for the day. Power has still not been restored everywhere. There is great concern about the human cost of the blackout, as hospitals had no access to electricity. Mainstream media today gloated over what they called the blackout’s “destabilizing” effect on Venezuela’s political and economic stability.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

President Trump ‘Honored’ by Judge Ellis Remarking There Was ‘No Collusion with Russia’

March 8 (EIRNS)—Speaking at the White House today, replying to a reporter’s question about his response to the sentencing of Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump said, “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort. I think it’s been a very, very tough time for him.”

The President continued, reported the White House: “But if you notice, both his lawyer—a highly respected man and a very highly respected judge [T.S. Ellis]—the judge said there was no collusion with Russia.  It’s had nothing to do with collusion.  There was no collusion.  It’s a collusion hoax.  It’s a collusion witch-hoax.  I don’t collude with Russia.

“So I just want to tell you that his [Manafort’s] lawyer went out of his way, actually, to make a statement last night. No collusion with Russia.  There was absolutely none.  The judge, I mean, for whatever reason—I was very honored by it—also made the statement that this had nothing do with collusion with Russia.”

Trump indicated that the coup-mongers’ policy is “you know, keep it going. Let’s go. Keep the hoax going. Just a hoax. Senator Burr said there’s no collusion. If you look at Devin Nunes and the House Intelligence Committee they said there’s no collusion. And guess what? There is none.”

It’s worth noting Judge Ellis’s own comment on the four-year sentence for Manafort. The four-year sentence, he said, “is sufficiently punitive … [and] to impose a sentence of 19-24 years on Mr. Manafort would clearly be a disparity. In the end, I don’t think the guidelines range is at all appropriate…. I think what I’ve done is sufficiently punitive, and anyone who disagrees should spend a day in a federal penitentiary.”

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow Urges Backing for Trump’s Climate Science Panel

March 9 (EIRNS)—The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) sent out a mailing arguing for a mobilization to defend President Donald Trump’s effort to create a Presidential Committee on Climate Science (PCCS), to be headed by Princeton physicist Dr. William Happer. “It’s about time,” they say, although “Chuck Schumer vowed to defund the panel. What are you afraid of, Chuck?” They go on that Happer, who has over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers, is now being subjected to character assassination by the green fraudsters. “Let the White House know that silencing Happer and other men and women of science will not be allowed to succeed.”

The post includes an article by Dr. David Wojick attacking Sciencemagazine, which is leading the assault on the PCCS, by only repeating endlessly that Trump is “questioning climate science,” which is the line seen on virtually every press account. Wojick counters that Trump is not questioning climate science, but “climate alarmism.”

It also includes an article by Dr. Larry Bell, who spoke at the Feb. 16 Schiller Institute Conference in New Jersey. Dr. Bell wrote that the military was dragged into peddling fake climate change concepts when then-Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John Warner put language into the National Defense Authorization Act in 2007 requiring the military to accept the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other fake reports, and apply them to the military planning. The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review then asserted that climate change will shape security policy, and demanded cuts in energy usage and reductions in CO2 emissions.

Dr. Bell ridicules Dr. James Hansen (as he did at the Schiller Conference) from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan for peddling the fake studies, such as the one predicting early melting of the Himalayan glaciers, since shown to be a hoax.

Reach us at eirdailyalert@larouchepub.com or call 1-571-293-0935