MONDAY, MARCH 4, 2019 Volume 6, Number 43 EIR Daily Alert Service P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390

U.S., South Korean Defense Chiefs Confirm the End of Large-Scale Joint Military Exercises

President Trump Gives Two-Hour Speech at CPAC, at High Level and with High Irony!

Democrats Demand Congress Sign On to British Monarchy Lie of Man-Made Climate Change

Russia Steps Up Economic Aid for Venezuela, Helping Block Another Regime-Change Disaster

Will Americans Freeze to Death Because of the Green Lie?

U.S. Energy Secretary Gives Green Light To Proceed on Fast-Neutron Test Reactor

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EDITORIAL

Multiple Global Crises Threaten War—‘Four Powers’ Demonstrate Necessary Solutions

March 3 (EIRNS)—The past week witnessed multiple regional crises, any one of which could spark a war which could become global virtually overnight. And yet, demonstrations of how to resolve these crises are also expressing themselves in a manner which could bring about a totally new paradigm for mankind as a whole.

Although the Trump-Kim summit did not reach a concluded deal, both sides expressed enthusiasm for the progress achieved and for continued peaceful negotiations, while North Korea announced a continued suspension of nuclear testing and the U.S. announced an end to large scale military exercises with South Korea. Of particular note is that both sides carefully coordinated their positions, and their post-summit planning, with Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea.

At the same time, two nuclear armed nations in South Asia were driven into a dangerous exchange of military fire, provoked, as usual, by a horrendous terrorist attack on India by foreign-directed terrorists based in Pakistan. Yet, here also, the U.S., Russia and China all engaged in easing the crisis, and may succeed in bringing India and Pakistan together in countering terrorism, and then proceed to higher levels of cooperation.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in her weekly webcast on Friday, said: “These two incidents—North Korea and now also the India-Pakistan situation—demonstrate that the world absolutely needs the cooperation of the four major powers, at least. The United States, Russia, China and India. That is one of the reasons why my husband, Lyndon LaRouche, had called already many years ago for a four-power agreement to address all major problems of the world situation, including the need for a new financial and credit system, a New Bretton Woods system.”

With the Russiagate coup attempt nearly dead (even the lying Michael Cohen had to admit to the drooling Democrats in the Congress that he had no evidence regarding their imagined “collusion”), the vile, corrupted coup plotters among the Congressional Democrats (Schiff, Nadler and Warner) went on the Sunday talk shows today to lay out their next line of attack on the duly elected President of the United States: six critical Congressional Committees, now under Democrat chairmanship, will waste the legislative branch’s time and taxpayers’ money with multiple investigations, and scores of subpoenas, to continue the witch hunt—but shifting to digging for any petty crime they can uncover, or make up, regarding Trump’s finances. Trump labelled this the “Schiffy shift.”

Simply taking note that the impeachment of President Donald Trump, or otherwise removing him from office, would leave war-mongering fanatic Mike Pence in charge, ready to wage war on Russia and China (whom Trump wants to befriend) is enough to convince any thinking person of the actual intention behind the anti-Trump campaign being orchestrated from London.

The problem lies precisely in finding such “thinking persons.” Zepp-LaRouche addressed the problem in her webcast: “Given the fact that the old paradigm is collapsing, it’s disintegrating, there are people and forces representing this old paradigm that are pushing confrontation. I think it is extremely urgent to recognize that either humanity moves to a completely new type of thinking, a New Paradigm where you establish new international relations, which take into account the security interests, the economic interests, the political interests of all nations.  The only way you can do that is to establish a higher order system, a New Paradigm which overcomes geopolitics and puts humanity as one, first, and then all national and regional interests second…. I think it is really very important that we develop a different kind of thinking to approach all of these problems. The idea of Nikolaus of Cusa, who thought these things already in the 15th century, that in order to solve problems you need the ‘coincidence of opposites’—the coincidentia oppositorum—as an approach to solve problems. You find the higher level of reason where the problems which, on a lower, Aristotelian level of contradiction are looking insolvable, can be solved.  That is what Einstein also expressed in a different way.  He said you will never find a solution with the same method which caused the problem to arise.  That means you cannot just geopolitically try to put this puzzle here and that puzzle there; but you have to define the common interests of humanity.”

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

President Trump Gives Two-Hour Speech at CPAC, at High Level and with High Irony!

March 2 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump delivered a thorough-composed overview of the accomplishments of his Presidency, and intentions, in a number of areas at the Conservative Political Action Committee Conference today at National Harbor, Maryland, to a packed house of thousands of his supporters, a full press contingent, and livestream to many meeting halls around the country.

The President went from point to point, with stories and jokes for more than two hours, observing “no empty seats in the house.” At one point he said, he was “totally off script right now,” and stating “this is how I got elected: by going off script,” and recalled his victory in 2016. “We did something that has never happened before, and now we have to verify it in 2020 with an even bigger victory.”

There were many high points. One of the most important, is his reiteration of leaving war zones. “We want to bring our people back; we want to fix out country up—roads, bridges, schools.”

On Syria, the President said, “Probably as of today or tomorrow, we will actually have 100 percent of the caliphate in Syria out, and we will leave a small group, but bring our people home.” This point he hit home very hard.

Trump recounted that he flew to Iraq, and asked a Gen. Raisin’ Cain, whose name he had fun with—referring to Air Force Brig. Gen. Daniel Caine, a deputy commanding general in Iraq—why it took two years to knock off 2, 3, or 4% of the remaining terrorists, and General Caine told him that the U.S. could be finished in a week if we attacked ISIS in a different way, not just hitting them from one base.

Trump described his flight into Iraq, and how he sat up with the pilot, because he likes to be around people who know how to do things. When the pilot ordered all the aircraft lights out, and made the landing approach in the dark for safety—with Trump complaining that you couldn’t see the runway, Trump made the point: “We’ve spent $7 trillion in the Mideast, and we can’t even land a plane with the lights on!”

Trump savaged the Democrats’ “Green New Deal,” based largely on wind power. He mimicked a husband asking his wife, “Darling, is the wind blowing today? I’d like to watch television.”

He told the crowd that after two years of Mueller’s investigation, “no collusion had been found”—pointing to House Intelligence Committee’s new chair, Democrat Adam Schiff and his failed “collusion delusion.” “Robert Mueller never received a vote,” he said, and neither did Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Trump threw in that he had had “a nasty confrontation with Mueller a number of years ago.” Trump also said that as of yesterday, there is a “Schiffy shift” going on in House Intelligence, when “Russia” is no longer the issue, but instead Trump’s finances, and anything else.

On his firing of former FBI head James Comey, which Democrats protested, Trump recounted that a year before, all the Democrats, like John Podesta, had insisted on Comey’s resignation. Trump dramatized the irony: “I told Melania: I’m going to do something today—fire Comey. We will be popular…”

He used the same “I told Melania…” irony device, to great effect, more than once.

On trade, Trump said, we are renegotiating “horrible trade deals, and standing up for American workers. Now, with companies coming in, we need workers but they must come legally, and with merit. We’re building the wall…” Trump pointed to $800 billion lost in trade last year.

“Right now we have people in Congress who hate our country.”

Trump attacked Federal Reserve Chairman William Powell, saying “America is booming,” but the Fed Chair likes “quantitative tightening.” He “likes raising interest rates. We want a strong dollar, but not so strong that it is prohibitive for other nations to deal with us.”

On the Democrats, Trump said, “We’re winning, and they’re not…. We will verify it in 2020; we need an even bigger victory.” He said, “I was a conservative; experts said 2016 election would be close. I got 304 electoral votes; Hillary got 227. I think we’ll do even better in 2020…. We are reversing decades of failure.”

Trump spoke of his negotiations with China, “I dusted off the old tariff law,” and then spoke about the great tariff debates of 1888: President McKinley said others cannot come into our country and steal the wealth. Today we are reversing decades of blunders.

“I got elected by being off script.”

Trump brought a youth on stage, who had been beaten up for promoting conservative ideas on campus, and Trump announced that strict penalties would be drafted for use against those who would suppress political ideas by violence.

Trump said that the U.S. must defend its borders; he referred to crime and murder on the border, giving statistics of crimes by illegal aliens and said illegal immigration must be stopped, and that is why he declared a national emergency.

Kim Jong Un Looks to Another Summit with U.S., Appreciates Progress So Far

March 2 (EIRNS)—Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported yesterday that North Korean Chairman Kim Jong Un expressed readiness for another meeting during his talks with President Donald Trump in Hanoi, and let Trump know of his gratitude for the U.S. President’s efforts and for the long journey President Trump had made to Hanoi.

KCNA reported that Trump and Kim “had a constructive and candid exchange of their opinions over the practical issues arising in opening up a new era of the improvement of the D.P.R.K.-U.S. relations on the basis of progress.”

Democrats Demand Congress Sign On to British Monarchy Lie of Man-Made Climate Change

March 1 (EIRNS)—Unable to line up all their ranks behind the embarrassing Markey/Ocasio-Cortez “Green New Deal” resolution, Senators Tom Carper (D-DE) and the unfortunate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Feb. 28 introduced a new, very brief, three-point “climate change” resolution. Some Democratic Senators, albeit a minority, were known to be nervous about the political costs of being associated with the excesses of the “Green New Deal,” but all 47 Senate Democrats quickly cosponsored this one. In so doing, they all endorsed the lie which underlies the edifice of anti-industrial, anti-progress “decarbonization” policies against which Americans can be expected to soon revolt: that modern industrial society is the “cause” of climate change.

S.J.Res.9, a joint resolution. which is written to be introduced in the House as well, reads as follows:

“Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

“That it is the sense of Congress that

“(1) climate change is real;

“(2) human activity during the last century is the dominant cause of the climate crisis; and

“(3) the United States and Congress should take immediate action to address the challenge of climate change.”

That’s it. Nothing more. The British Empire’s Prince Philip would be proud.

Schumer wildly called climate change “the most significant crisis facing humanity.” He ranted that “Democrats are prepared to take bold action to address it but Republicans are standing in the way. We are demanding that Leader McConnell and Republicans in the Senate take their heads out of the sand and answer three questions: do they believe climate change is real, is it caused by humans, and do they believe the Congress and United States need to take immediate action to address it?”

Schumer and Carper sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to all Republican Senators, offering them to drink this oligarchic Kool-Aid, too. “The scientific consensus about climate change should no longer be an open question in the Republican-controlled Senate,” they insist.

Will Americans Freeze to Death Because of the Green Lie?

March 1 (EIRNS)—The National Weather Service has forecast a new polar vortex will bring frigid weather from the Upper Plains states into Arkansas and northern Texas on March 6-10, testing our national electricity grid again, Energy Secretary Rick Perry reported in a press conference yesterday. “This is going to be a really deep, deep polar vortex, all the way to my home state, that will put a massive test upon our ability to deliver an energy supply to keep our citizens safe,” he warned.

Hearings and studies are continuing in the Midwest states to analyze the dangerous weaknesses in the grid exposed during the late-January polar vortex, when wind and solar power units could not function in that freezing Arctic cold, precisely when providing maximum power was a matter of life and death.

Perry cited the second vortex, when arguing why the Trump Administration advocates an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, including keeping an adequate number of “baseload” power plants powering the grid. “Baseload” is the term used for plants that provide power 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

By which he means we better keep and expand the coal and nuclear plants the Green New Deal fanatics want to shut down. Any dolt knows that there is no solar and wind power when “the Sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Russia Steps Up Economic Aid for Venezuela, Helping Block Another Regime-Change Disaster

March 2 (EIRNS)—Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized following his talks with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez yesterday that the Russian government will continue to break the economic blockade of Venezuela which neo-conservatives in London and Washington are using to overthrow the legitimate government of Venezuela. Lavrov reported that Russia had just sent 7.5 tons of medicines into Venezuela, and is now “specifying organizational and logistical details” regarding the list of additional medications and medical compounds requested by Rodriguez, on top of the “massive supplies of Russian grain” which Russia has shipped to Venezuela.

He and Rodriguez discussed steps to strengthen “links in trade, investment, industrial production and finances.” They agreed that there will be “a detailed discussion of the prospects for the implementation of large projects in geological exploration and upstream operations, joint initiatives in the pharmaceuticals industry, information technology, nuclear medicine, peaceful uses of outer space and defense industry cooperation” at the 14th meeting of the Russian-Venezuelan High-Level Inter-Governmental Commission that is scheduled for early April in Moscow.

Russia’s move is a big problem for the regime-change gambit. As Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Rockefeller family’s U.S. Council of Americas/Americas Society, wrote in the National Intereston Feb. 25, that the possibility of removing the Maduro government requires “squeez[ing] it like the large anacondas that inhabit Venezuelan waters,” because armed intervention is not supported in the region and has little legal basis, nor has it met with much enthusiasm in Washington.

Lavrov singled Elliott Abrams out by name, twice, as a key problem, including that Abrams “says directly that his responsibilities do not include searching for a peaceful solution but raising tensions and creating a situation that would provoke, as the U.S. wants, an explosion and bloodshed in Venezuela, and justify a military intervention.”

In that context, Lavrov reported that the Russians have information that “the U.S. plans to buy small arms, mortars, portable air defense systems and a number of other types of weapons in an East European country, and move them closer to Venezuela by an airline of a regime that is the most, or rather absolutely obedient to Washington in the post-Soviet space.” Typical Abrams: an “Iran-Contra Take 2!”

They have a problem, however. Venezuela’s neighbors, Brazil and Colombia in particular, are currently refusing to support any military invasion of Venezuela, Lavrov pointed out. “If they keep their promise and firmly adhere to this position,” these plans “are unlikely to materialize.”

Venezuela’s Maduro Suggests Trump’s Regime-Change Policy Will Have To Change

March 3 (EIRNS)—Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro told ABC News on Feb. 27 that he thinks that “these people surrounding President Trump and advising him on Venezuelan policies are bad, and I think that at some point, President Trump will have to say stop, stop, we have to see what happens with Venezuela, and change his policies.” Maduro named John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence as the obstacles to changing policy.

Despite references in the same interview to President Donald Trump wanting to have a war to gain Venezuela’s oil, Maduro stuck to his recognition that President Trump is the key factor for Washington’s policy toward Venezuela to change.

President Trump and I “have big ideological differences—very big,” he said. “But right now, President Trump should be arriving in Vietnam. Remember the Vietnam War? The United States went 14,000 km from their border to a disastrous war that went on for more than a decade, and now they have good relations with Vietnam. And why did Donald Trump go to Vietnam? To shake Kim Jong Un’s hand, the president of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea. So there are signs that I think point to the 21st century. And in Venezuela, their advisers, that group that we have denounced, has boxed in Donald Trump’s Venezuela policy to a failed Cold War scheme.”

Bolton, for his part, used CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday show today to display his abject ignorance of U.S. history, by citing the Monroe Doctrine as grounds for carrying out regime change against Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua in the name of “democracy.”

Bolton’s claim that “the objective of American presidents going back to Ronald Reagan to have a completely democratic hemisphere,” has anything to do with the actual Monroe Doctrine, is just bunkum. American statesman Lyndon LaRouche wrote repeatedly on the continuing importance of that 1823 doctrine enunciated by then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams as a statement of the principle that the United States refused to “degrad[e] itself to the disgraceful status of a ‘cock-boat in the wake of a British man-of-war,’ ” but rather would use its powers to foster a community of sovereign nation states with a common interest in the Americas.

Tomorrow a new flashpoint for crisis is set. The regime change-designated “interim president” Juan Guaidó issued a call for mass demonstrations inside Venezuela on Monday and Tuesday, March 4 and 5, to “welcome” him as he returns from his visits to Colombia, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Ecuador. Guaidó crossed the border from Venezuela into Colombia, whence, after meeting with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, he was flown to Brazil on a Colombian Air Force jet. How Guaidó will return to Venezuela, and whether he will be arrested when he does so, for violating a judicial order against leaving the country, remains to be seen.

(LaRouche’s extensive writings on the Monroe Doctrine includeEIR, July 3, 1984, “Lyndon LaRouche on the Current Importance of the Monroe Doctrine”; and EIR, Sept. 19, 2003, “The Sovereign States of the Americas: The Monroe Doctrine Today.”)

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Five Stars Movement in Italy Finds Itself a ‘Catch-22’ over Infrastructure

March 2 (EIRNS)—The Five Star Movement (M5S) must back down to an ultimatum from its government coalition partner the Lega: that either Italy goes ahead with the Turin-Lyon high-speed rail infrastructure, or face a government crisis. A government crisis and early elections would be a bloodbath for the Five Stars, which has already lost 10 points in the polls since the March 2018 general elections. So, caught in a Catch-22 situation—damned if you do, damned if you don’t—they chose the lesser evil, which is to stay in the government.

Thus, they have found a way to make an about-face on the Turin-Lyon infrastructure (TAV) without losing face. They commissioned a survey showing that 70% of the M5S voters and activists are in favor of the TAV. And so, “vox populi, vox Dei,” we have the miracle of internet democracy.

Latest polls show M5S popularity has dropped to 21.2% (down from 32% in the 2018 general elections) and 36% for the Lega (up from 16% in 2018). The Five Stars are losing mostly green and leftist voters who dislike its embrace with the Lega and the turnabout on several issues of industry and infrastructure (anathema to the green ideology)—the Ilva steel plant, TAP pipeline, the Terzo Valico high-speed rail, and now TAV.

U.S., South Korean Defense Chiefs Confirm the End of Large-Scale Joint Military Exercises

March 3 (EIRNS)—The U.S. Department of Defense issued a release March 2 confirming earlier press reports that the U.S. and South Korea have agreed to end the large-scale joint military exercises which normally begin in March. The release said that Seoul’s Minister of National Defense Jeong Kyeong-doo and the Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan spoke by phone on March 2, to assess the Trump-Kim summit and discuss “further coordination of measures to establish complete denuclearization and lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula, as well as steps to maintain the readiness of combined forces.”

The release reported: “The Secretary and Minister reviewed and approved the Alliance decisions recommended by the Commander of U.S. Forces Korea and the Republic of Korea Joint Chiefs of Staff on the combined exercise and training program. Following close coordination, both sides decided to conclude the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle series of exercises.”

The two nations will continue close military cooperation and assure combat readiness through smaller exercises. The massive exercises were perceived as a provocation by North Korea, just as the nuclear and missile tests in North Korea were seen as provocations by the U.S. and South Korea. Chairman Kim Jong Un has agreed to continue the suspension of these tests, President Donald Trump announced after the summit.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

U.S. Energy Secretary Gives Green Light To Proceed on Fast-Neutron Test Reactor

March 1 (EIRNS)—U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry announced yesterday that the Department of Energy (DOE) will proceed towards building the Versatile Test Reactor (VTR, also known as the Versatile Fast Neutron Source), as “a key step to implementing President Trump’s direction to revitalize and expand the U.S. nuclear industry.”

The test reactor, projected to start operations in December 2025, “will provide leading edge capability for accelerated testing of advanced nuclear fuels, materials, instrumentation, and sensors. It will allow DOE to modernize its essential nuclear energy infrastructure, and conduct crucial advanced technology and materials testing within the United States in a safe, efficient and timely way,” the DOE press release explains.

Secretary Perry is quoted: “This cutting-edge advanced reactor will give American companies the ability they currently lack to conduct advanced technology and fuels tests without having to go to our competitors in Russia and China.”

This is the first reactor the Department of Energy has built since the 1970s. It will be the first fast-neutron spectrum facility operating in the U.S. for over 20 years; the lack of one precluded “the ability to conduct the types of accelerated irradiation testing needed by non-light water advanced reactor concepts,” the DOE reported.

DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory will lead the VTR project. This is interesting, given that the INL is at the center of Department efforts to develop a U.S. capability for developing advanced nuclear reactors, both fission and fusion.

The lead nuclear engineer on the project at INL, Kemal Pasamehmetoglu, told Science magazine that Secretary Perry’s announcement represents only the first of five “critical decisions” which DOE has to make before any construction will begin. But the announcement gives the go-ahead for researchers to work on a conceptual design for the reactor, which Science describes as a small, 300 MW reactor, most likely cooled by liquid sodium, which would not produce electrical power.

U.S.-Russian Space Collaboration Moving Forward, and Upward

March 3 (EIRNS)—In an era of Russophobia and economic sanctions, U.S. and Russian cooperation in space is moving forward.  U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Jon Huntsman has pointed to the SIRIUS isolation experiment, which is to begin in March 2019, as testimony to ongoing collaboration.

In a Russian-language tweet, the U.S. embassy quoted Huntsman citing the joint mission as important for U.S.-Russian cooperation in other areas, in which Americans and Russians can jointly work together to achieve a common goal.

The Scientific International Research in Unique Terrestrial Station (SIRIUS) experiment will simulate a flight to the Moon, a landing, lunar operations, and a return to Earth.

Another cooperative effort is the first unmanned test flight of the U.S. Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station (ISS), for which Roscosmos and NASA have reached a protocol according to Joel Montalbano, NASA’s deputy ISS program manager: “We agreed with Roscosmos yesterday on a protocol of the approach, actually, through discussions with them, explaining what steps SpaceX has taken in order to ensure the safety. They asked for some additional steps where we would protect the space station, close another hatch or two, have the Soyuz, have the crew ready to go to the Soyuz. We agreed to do that,” Montalbano told a press conference, broadcast by NASA on Feb. 28.

NASA officials then said that their Russian colleagues had concerns related to the U.S. agency’s lack of a backup computer system to prevent Crew Dragon from colliding with the ISS if the vehicle goes dead. Crew Dragon, also known as Dragon 2, is a reusable spacecraft was launched on March 2 and successfully docked with ISS on March 2. It was designed as a successor to the Dragon space freighter.

Evidence That Life on Mars Could Have Existed Underground, and New Aspects of Water Presence

March 2 (EIRNS)—Two recent studies by European and American scientists increase the possibility that whether or not conditions were ever present for life to exist on the surface of Mars, it may have thrived underground.

Scientists studying high-resolution images from a camera on board the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter (launched in 2003 with Russian assistance) and on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter examined 24 deep enclosed craters under the surface. They found that the crater floors had geologic features such as channels, that could only have been formed by water. They also found the presence of minerals in five of the craters that are “linked to the emergence of life on Earth,” ESA reported Feb. 28. An article, “Phase Equilibria Modeling of Low-Grade Metamorphic Martian Rocks,” was first published Feb. 6 in the Journal of Geophysical Research Planets

A parallel study has been underway in one of the driest places on Earth—the Atacama Desert in Chile—as an analogue for conditions on Mars. There, scientists report, they have found living organisms as deep as three feet underground. They report that these highly-specialized organisms had adapted to high salt levels in the soil, and probably went underground to escape the high levels of UV radiation at the surface.

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