MONDAY, MARCH 25, 2019

Volume 6, Number 58

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

Trump Reverses Sanctions on North Korea after Treasury Announces Them

White House Won’t Hand Over Documents on Trump-Putin Private Discussions, Enraging Congress

Lavrov Dates the 1999 NATO Bombing of Serbia as Beginning the End of International Law

Inter-American Development Bank Cancels China Meeting To Defend Guaidó’s ‘Government’

President Trump Insists, No U.S. President Should Be Treated the Way I Was

Italy and China Sign Groundbreaking MOU on Belt and Road Initiative

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EDITORIAL

A Revolutionary Moment—Mueller Found Nothing, While the New Paradigm Takes Shape

March 24 (EIRNS)—The relativity of time is clearly demonstrated by the quickening pace of developments around the world over the past days. In times such as this, the awareness and the sensibility of the common man become sharpened, seeing both that the common assumptions about “the powers that be” are being shattered, and that truly new ideas, based on the creativity of man, are within our grasp.

Attorney General Barr today released a four-page document summarizing the final report submitted by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller on Friday. Mueller found absolutely nothing to indicate either “collusion” with Russia, by the President or anyone in his family or his administration. Nothing. He proved himself to be the snake he has always been by claiming he could not reach a decision on “obstruction,” leaving that to the Attorney General and his Deputy, who immediately said there was no evidence of obstruction. A full analysis of the Attorney General’s report, and the years of subversion carried out by the criminals in the Obama Justice Department and their neo-con allies, on behalf of British intelligence, to overthrow the elected President of the United States, follows below. Keep in mind that President Trump, just one week ago, retweeted a charge that the entire Russiagate hoax was “designed in part to help the UK counter Russian influence by baiting the United States into taking a hard line against them.” This is, of course, a fact documented by the LaRouche movement from the beginning.

This historic event is but one of many in the past 48 hours, from Friday to Sunday:

• The nation of Italy, one of the world’s largest economies, and the historical center of the European Renaissance, joined the New Silk Road, during Xi Jinping’s visit, despite hysterical opposition from the dinosaurs in the EU bureaucracy in Brussels. The event followed by only a few days the cosponsored MoviSol and Lombardy Region forum in Milan in which the head of the government’s Task Force China, Michele Geraci, and Schiller Institute founder and chair Helga Zepp-LaRouche jointly addressed the world-historic nature of this development.

• The British government descended into total chaos, as the deadline for Brexit is fast approaching with no solution in sight.

• In France, the 19th week of Yellow Vest demonstrations saw Macron call out the army.

• President Donald Trump publicly overturned sanctions on China and North Korea imposed just 24 hours earlier by his Treasury Department, which sanctions were backed strongly by his National Security Advisor John Bolton. Trump announced that the team negotiating an agreement with China will go to Beijing next Thursday, March 28.

• Official representatives of the U.S., Russia and China met in Washington, D.C. to plan a path for withdrawing foreign troops from Afghanistan, one of the “endless wars” which Trump has sworn to end. Until now, these efforts have been stalled by the anti-Russia and anti-China campaigns by the neo-cons and the Democrats.

The forces of sanity are on the move, but the Empire will not pass meekly into oblivion. The hawks in the military are escalating their provocations against both Russia and China, while fighting tooth and nail to stop or at least slow down Trump’s effort to end the colonial wars launched by Bush and Obama. Our children are being abused, induced to denounce science and progress, and even to denounce having children, under the guise of the Green New Deal. The financial system is teetering on the brink, as an inversion of the yield curve (also in the past 48 hours!) has sent shivers through the spines of the Lords of Wall Street and the City of London. The Democrats and their fellow neo-cons in the Republican Party are scrambling to manufacture new ways to bring down the President of the United States, at precisely the moment in which he can, with the active backing of the American people, act upon the LaRouche program to save the nation and set the world on a course for a new paradigm. That means joining the New Silk Road; together with Russia, China and India, convoking a New Bretton Woods conference to establish a new world financial system, based on Glass-Steagall, national banking to generate credit for rebuilding industry, agriculture and infrastructure, and restoring American nuclear and fusion energy development and our once great space exploration system, through international cooperation in the frontiers of human knowledge.

This is a time for action. Mobilizing the citizens of all nations to act on the call for exoneration of LaRouche evokes in them the sense of hope and optimism for real solutions, and to overcome the decades of induced pessimism in a society drowning in drugs, pornography, wars and austerity. Be joyful in the potential for humanity.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Trump Reverses Sanctions on North Korea after Treasury Announces Them

March 22 (EIRNS)—President Trump this afternoon reversed a set of sanctions which were imposed March 21 by the Treasury Department on China and North Korea.

Trump’s tweet, posted at 2:22 p.m. EDT, reads: “It was announced today [sic] by the U.S. Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea. I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!”

AP reports that White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said that Trump “likes Chairman Kim and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.” National Security Advisor John Bolton had strongly endorsed the new sanctions.

The fake news media are hysterical. The “Failing New York Times” reported that Trump’s action is a “remarkable display of dissension within the Trump Administration and represented a striking case of a White House intervening to reverse a major national security decision made only hours earlier by the President’s own officials.”

The President is definitely on the move, as also shown by his exposure of John McCain’s criminal role in spreading the fake MI6 dossier to the FBI, “for very evil purposes.”

White House Won’t Hand Over Documents on Trump-Putin Private Discussions, Enraging Congress

March 23 (EIRNS)—In a letter to the chairmen of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight Committees, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone wrote that the White House will not hand over documents pertaining to President Donald Trump’s private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The three committee chairmen, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Rep. Elliot Engel (D-NY) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) respectively, had demanded that “all documents and communications” referring to conversations between the two heads of state, including personal meetings and phone calls, be handed over by March 15. They received nothing on that date.

As Cipollone states in his letter, Politico reports, the demands from the committee chairmen “cite no legal authority for the proposition that another branch of the government can force the President to disclose diplomatic communications with foreign leaders or that supports forcing disclosure of the confidential internal deliberations of the President’s national security advisors.” Moreover, he wrote, “it is settled law that the Constitution entrusts the conduct of foreign relations exclusively to the Executive Branch, as it makes the President the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.”

The White House Counsel argued that “The president must be free to engage in discussions with foreign leaders without fear that those communications will be disclosed and used as fodder for partisan political purpose…. No foreign leader would engage in private conversations with the President, or the President’s senior advisors, if such conversations were subject to public disclosure (or disclosure to committees of Congress).”

The White House response has provoked the expected degree of apoplexy from Democratic legislators who claim they have every right to know whether Trump is under Putin’s spell.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Lavrov Dates the 1999 NATO Bombing of Serbia as Beginning the End of International Law

March 22 (EIRNS)—In an interview with Russia’s NTV “U-Turn Above the Atlantic” documentary, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov charged that NATO’s bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999 was the beginning of the dismantling of the system of international law and the beginning of a “rules-based” system in which the rules are made by the West and enforced by military action. “The Western countries are now increasingly referring to a ‘rules-based order’ instead of calling on everyone to adhere to international laws,” he said, reported Sputnik today. International laws came about as the result of talks among nations where consensus was reached, whereas “rules are being invented by the Westerners themselves,” he said. Referring to the NATO war on Serbia, he continued, “That is when it started, 20 years ago.”

The interview was for a documentary that NTV is airing on the 20th anniversary this week of the NATO bombing. The title refers to the first ever meeting between Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and President Bill Clinton scheduled as a state visit in Washington at that time.  Primakov was in flight midway across the Atlantic, when Al Gore phoned him to say that NATO had begun bombing Serbia.  The Prime Minister ordered his plane to reverse course, and the meeting never took place.

Inter-American Development Bank Cancels China Meeting To Defend Guaidó’s ‘Government’

March 23 (EIRNS)—At U.S. prompting, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) yesterday canceled next week’s annual meeting which was to have been held in Chengdu, China. The ostensible reason was that China refused to grant a visa to Harvard Professor Ricardo Hausmann, recently named by Venezuela’s fake “interim” President Juan Guaidó to be its representative to the IADB.

In reality, Reuters reported, China had determined that it would invite neither Hausmann nor the representative of the Nicolas Maduro government in order to “depoliticize” the meeting. But an unnamed “senior” Trump Administration official warned that unless Hausmann were granted a visa, the U.S. and its regional allies would “pull quorum” on the meeting, making it impossible to take place. The bank said it would make a decision within 30 days as to when a meeting will be held.

In an opinion piece published yesterday in the Miami Herald and other dailies, Vice President Mike Pence sermonized that China “is undermining the hemisphere’s progress towards democracy” by refusing to grant Hausmann a visa. China’s decision to “prop up” the Maduro regime, he pontificated, is “a reminder of the threat that distant powers pose to our region’s security and prosperity.”

President Trump Insists, No U.S. President Should Be Treated the Way I Was

March 23 (EIRNS)—In the second part of his interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, aired March 22, President Trump stated that following his election in 2016, he told his supporters who were demanding prosecution of Hillary Clinton, that it were better to forget that and “look to the future.”

But what followed was a vicious witch hunt and “hoax” which in the end turned up nothing. “They have treated me so viciously, and they have treated me so badly, and we did nothing wrong,” he said. “You look at the others—and all the people you hear about that had nothing to do with Russia, Russia collusion, nothing.” He referenced to the case of his first National Security Advisor, Gen. Michael Flynn, the highly respected Army officer whose life was destroyed by the Mueller investigation, stressing that even the FBI had admitted that Flynn hadn’t lied to them.

Trump said there were “stone cold crimes” committed by Obama officials, concerning the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. “There were so many crimes on the other side,” between deletion of Clinton’s 33,000 emails, former FBI Director Jim Comey’s lies to Congress, former CIA Director John Brennan’s lies to Congress, and former DNI James Clapper’s lies to Congress. “These are just absolute lies,” Trump said, and yet “nobody does anything about it…. We have been treated very, very unfairly.” No President of the United States should “ever be treated the way I was.”

The President concluded by saying there are areas on which he and the Democrats could collaborate, especially on infrastructure. “They want it, I want it,” so why not work together on it, he said.

ECONOMY

U.S. Talks with China, in Beijing This Week, in Washington Next Week

March 24 (EIRNS)—President Trump is sending U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to China on March 28, the White House announced yesterday. The two will be joined by Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish and other senior officials in “principal-level trade talks with Chinese representatives.”

The White House also announced that a Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier Liu He will arrive in Washington on April 3, less than a week after the U.S. team arrives in Beijing.

Federal Reserve Abruptly Reverses Policy To Deal with Crisis

March 24 (EIRNS)— Federal Reserve System Chairman Jerome Powell’s swiftly changing statements on Fed interest rate policy, and other actions, indicate that the Fed is reacting to the underlying collapse of the physical economy and financial bubble, which is becoming deeper and more publicly manifest.

At the conclusion of 2018, the Federal Reserve made a statement that it would make two interest rate hikes during 2019. The rate hikes, it was mooted, would be modest one-quarter percent increases in the Fed’s benchmark Federal funds rate, which rate sets the floor for interest rates in the economy as a whole.

But on March 20, the Federal Open Market Committee reversed course. The FOMC, preaching “patience” in its minutes, gave indication that there would be no interest rate increases at all during 2019, and according to a March 23 AP story, the Fed “also announced that by September, it will no longer reduce its bond portfolio.” That is, instead of “tapering”—the policy of reducing its toxic bonds holdings, only 10% of which have actually been sold—the Fed would begin again pumping money into the economy through quantitative easing.

During the week of March 17-23, the Fed’s actions were accentuated by what is termed an “inversion of Treasury bond yields,” in which the interest rate on long-dated 30-year bonds fell below that of 90-day Treasury bills (the 30-year U.S. bond rate fell three-quarters of a point since last June). Such inversions nearly always precede a further crunch in the physical economy and financial markets, since insiders are hedging their bets against a crash by going into long term bonds.

What is going on? Many countries are going into deep economic decline, including nearly every major nation in Europe. The financial problem typified by the case of Deutsche Bank, is completely unresolved. The mooted Deutsche Bank takeover of Commerzbank will not work. Commerzbank, though having its own troubles, is a leading bank for the Mittelstand, and has high penetration with large corporations. From 2013 to 2016, it improved its capitalization and partly repositioned its retail banking. Deutsche Bank is largely being given Commerzbank’s assets to suck from.

The U.S. corporate debt bubble, and the more encompassing world derivatives market, are ticking time bombs. The physical economic collapse is growing. The Fed is positioning itself to try to deal, in its impotent way, with that reality.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Italy and China Sign Groundbreaking MOU on Belt and Road Initiative

March 23 (EIRNS)—Italy and China have signed the famous Memorandum of Understanding on Belt and Road cooperation today, together with 10 economic agreements and 18 institutional agreements (19 with the BRI MOU). The MOU is a milestone and is said to already be being studied by other countries that want to follow Italy. [The complete memorandum is available in English from the Italian government.]

The MOU says at the outset that “The Parties will work together within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to translate mutual complementary strengths into advantages for practical cooperation and sustainable growth, supporting synergies between the Belt and Road Initiative and priorities identified in the Investment Plan for Europe and the Trans-European Networks, bearing in mind discussions in the EU China Connectivity Platform.”

With the MOU, Italy is the first large industrial economy to join the Belt and Road, as Chinese media proudly stress. The signature of the MOU occurred in spite of trans-Atlantic pressures and open hostility by Italy’s “partners” in the EU. Italian Minister for Economic Development Luigi Di Maio, who signed the MOU together with Chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission He Lifeng, stated that “today is for us a very important day, in which the Made in Italy is winning, Italian firms are winning. We made a step to help our economy to grow. Italy came first with China.”

The economic agreements include: a strategic partnership between the Italian Cassa Depositi e Prestiti and the Bank of China to finance Italian firms in China; a MOU between the Italian oil company ENI and the Bank of China for explorations in China; Ansaldo Energia signed two agreements, one to develop gas turbines with UGTC and another one for the supply of a turbine to Shanghai Electric and Benxi Steel; the Port Authorities of Trieste and Genoa signed an agreement with the construction giant China Communications Construction Co. (CCCC). Cassa Depositi and the natural gas utility Snam signed a deal with the Silk Road Fund for investments along the Silk Road; the Institute for Foreign Trade signed a deal with Suning to create a platform to promote Italian lifestyle in China; and the Danieli group signed a contract with China Camc Engineering for the construction of a steel plant in Azerbaijan.

The institutional agreements, besides the MOU on the BRI cooperation, include cooperation on innovative startups and electronic trade, as well as cooperation between the two space agencies, agriculture and culture, health and media.

Russian Envoy Describes U.S., Russian, Chinese Cooperation on Peace for Afghanistan

March 23 (EIRNS)—On March 21-22 envoys from the U.S., Russia, China and the EU met in Washington to discuss cooperation on a settlement of the Afghanistan war, a highly significant level of cooperation between the Trump Administration and Russia and China. The meeting was hosted by U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad, who briefed Russian Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov and his Chinese Foreign Ministry Special Envoy on the Afghan Affairs Deng Xijun, and EU Special Envoy for Afghanistan Roland Kobia.

While the U.S. State Department issued a short statement acknowledging the meeting and positive discussion and prospect for another meeting, Russian envoy Kabulov made more extensive statements, reported by TASS.  “Both we and the Chinese are certainly interested in immediate success of the U.S. talks with the Taliban movement, five rounds of which were held in Doha. That’s why this is a key moment for further progress towards a stable peace in Afghanistan,” Kabulov said. As soon as the U.S. agrees with the Taliban on the schedule of foreign troops’ withdrawal, he continued, “we can start making next and more particular steps, leading to establishing peace in Afghanistan: this is ceasefire and a whole number of other … steps, and the most important of them will be direct talks of a broad spectrum of Afghans with the Taliban movement.”

He further stated: “The Taliban movement has said many times at its discussions with both the U.S. and other [sides] that it wants to see serious guarantors of its future deal with the United States. Among such guarantors they named Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran.”

Kabulov announced that the second intra-Afghan conference will be held in Doha on April 14-15: “Our partners, including U.S. partners, have praised the wide intra-Afghan meeting held in Moscow at the beginning of February. The second round will be held in Doha on April 14-15 They acknowledged that such dialogue lays the basis for achieving intra-Afghan compromise which should lead to stopping the war and ceasing bloodshed.

“Everybody liked [the format of the meeting in Moscow]. The composition [of participants in the Doha round] may be expanded but we are not part of it. This is up to Afghans themselves to decide. We did not even participate in the Moscow round, did not send any observers. Afghans will close the doors and speak in their own languages about what they want,” Kabulov explained.

Kabulov said he did not believe the war would restart once the troops withdrew. “Many fear that like in previous decades in case the Americans leave, there will be power vacuum, collapse and war. But the fact is that this won’t be so. If events develop in accordance with the scenario of the agreements on pulling out foreign forces and establishing ceasefire, there won’t be any war. The process of intra-Afghan agreements will begin on the future of their country and there won’t be any sense in the war,” the diplomat said.

“We will offer our helping hand as we will participate here as foreign players contributing to this process. Afghans should have a chance to sort it out by themselves and establish order. I won’t try to assume what that order might look like, but in any case, it should be a normal state. This is what we are talking about with the Taliban. Monopoly rule and return of the Taliban are out of the question,” Kabulov said.

Philippines Embraces Belt and Road and ‘Single Hand’ Leadership of Chinese Communist Party

March 23 (EIRNS)—Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro “Teddy Boy” Locsin, Jr. is in China, meeting with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing China’s planned Belt and Road investments in the Philippines. What he said about the Chinese Communist Party is setting the imperial crowd into conniptions.

Locsin said: “I speak for my country, which wants to see much to hope for, and nothing to fear, from the rise of a new power…. Without the new China there will be no prospect whatsoever for the developing world to grow into emerging economies. We would still be as we were throughout the second half of the last century. We were at the mercy of Western markets which on a whim can turn us away as they did throughout the post- and neo-colonial period. There is no propulsion as strong as people power, but it demands the direction of a single hand. That hand is absent in Western democracy. That direction the Communist Party has supplied. No other institution anywhere in the world could do it.”

Global Times, in reporting Locsin’s statement, wrote: “The best model is not the U.S. system or the Chinese system, but the one that best fits its own national conditions. China’s model is in line with its own social and historical conditions, leading to the country’s rise. This is the most important lesson that the Philippines and other developing countries should draw from China’s unique path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Back home, two former officials of the U.S. puppet regimes which preceded Duterte’s election in 2016, former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales and former Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario (who also served as Ambassador to the U.S.) filed a case against President Xi Jinping at the International Criminal Court for “atrocious actions of Chinese officials in the South China Sea and within Philippine territory,” and for “one of the most massive, near permanent and devastating destructions of the environment in humanity’s history.”

Besides being ridiculous on its face, it is worth noting that neither China nor the Philippines are members of the ICC—the Philippines officially withdrew just last week. Such is the desperate, fanciful and presumptive power of the oligarchs.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

‘Schools for Climate Action’ Push Pre-Teens To Lobby Federal and Local Lawmakers for Doom

March 22 (EIRNS)—The children’s page of the March 20 Washington Post this week, “Kidspost” makes a pitch for pre-teen mobilization on global warming. Titled, “Students to Press Congress for Climate-Protection Laws,” the article features a “Get Involved” box, citing websites that urge children to contact their schools and school boards. A severe case of mental child abuse.

One focus given is for Federal lobbying March 28, which the Postreports as, “a youth and educator climate advocacy day,” when worked-up youth are to come from California and elsewhere to hit Congress. Eight-year-old Emerson Blizman from Chico, California, who is coming, is quoted, “Climate change is a threat to our future….” The youth brigade intends to deliver climate action resolutions to all 535 offices of Congressional members.

It is reported that the resolution has been adopted nationwide by some 55 school boards, teacher unions and parent-teacher groups, from nine states. It calls for “carbon-pricing, a 100% clean-energy transition plan, and/or green infrastructure investments, to restore the climate for the good of young people.”

White House Wants To Accelerate NASA’s Manned Lunar Program

March 22 (EIRNS)—Pressure is on from the White House to speed up NASA’s manned lunar program, which reportedly will be the main topic of discussion at the next National Space Council meeting on March 26. The “return to the Moon,” which NASA had originally penciled in for the “early 2030s,” has already been moved to 2028 by Administrator Jim Bridenstine. Speaking on March 21 at the Goddard Symposium in Maryland, Space Council Executive Secretary Scott Pace said, “Our civil space sector, especially human spaceflight, I think needs a greater sense of urgency.”

Pace said there was a “window of opportunity” for NASA to implement its exploration plans. “NASA and industry have to execute on plan. We have a limited window here. We are not racing the Soviet Union, but we’re racing complacency.” He did not explain where this complacency lies, or why there is a “limited window.”

This directive to accelerate the lunar landing can only be done without greatly increasing the risk, including by providing NASA with the funding to bring in the needed resources. And it must not be done by cutting corners. As it stands, NASA is considering eliminating some of the testing of the SLS heavy lift booster to cut a few months off the schedule. This way of accelerating the program is a prescription for disaster.

What is driving this acceleration due to this perceived “limited window” is the concern that if “another country” gets there first, it would be a blow to U.S. leadership in space.

At the Goddard Symposium, and regarding China, Mary Lynne Dittmar, seasoned space policy advisor and president of the Coalition for Deep Space, proposed a different approach, explaining, “there are many opportunities for cooperation with China.” What is needed, she said, is a “whole government approach to China,” rather than separate policies for military, trade, space, and other issues.

OTHER

Britain’s May May Be Ousted, But Who Wants the Job?

March 24 (EIRNS)—The chaos continues in the U.K. The Times of London headline today reads: “Theresa May Summons Brexiteers as She Fights Off Coup.” With as many as 1 million people in the streets of London (aerial shots confirm the huge turnout) demanding a new Brexit referendum and May’s ouster, Prime Minister May called several leading Brexiters to Chequers (including former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Tory MP Jacob Rees-Moog) to try to come up with something to get through the new deadline of April 15 for either a new deal or a no-deal exit from the EU.

Tories generally rallied behind May and denied The Times report of a palace coup, but, as has been noted by many observers over the past months, none of the Tories want the job. One of the possible replacements, David Lidington (Minister for the Cabinet), denied he was calling for May to resign, but gave it away by telling theGuardian: “I tell you this: one thing that working closely with the prime minister does is cure you completely of any lingering shred of ambition to want to do that task.”

Some insiders are suggesting that the Tories are telling May that, if she agrees to step down, now, they will give up their opposition to her version of Brexit (i.e., staying under Brussels’ thumb by remaining in the customs union).

The Guardian also said that Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, rumored to be one of the group plotting to force her out in a cabinet meeting scheduled for March 25, “refused to be drawn on whether his colleagues had approached him asking him to intervene.” Hammond said a new referendum “deserves to be considered,” and acknowledged that May’s effort for yet another vote on her bill had no chance of passing.

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