EIR Daily Alert Service, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2019
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2019
Volume 6, Number 41
EIR Daily Alert Service
P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390
Rep. Adam Schiff Holds Hearing To Attack ‘Authoritarianism’—Meaning President Trump
Democrats’ Ploy with Michael Cohen to Subvert Trump’s Peace Effort in Korea
Nikki Haley’s New ‘Stand for America’ Advocacy Group Claims China Is Greatest Threat to America
Reasons Why the Ongoing India-Pakistan Fracas May Not Get Any Worse
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EDITORIAL
Peace and Development Superseding War in Asia; British Assets in U.S. Attempt To Bring Regime Change to Americas
Feb. 27 (EIRNS)—The second summit between President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un is underway in Vietnam. As Trump said in a tweet this morning, he and Kim “will try very hard to work something out on Denuclearization & then making North Korea an Economic Powerhouse. I believe that China, Russia, Japan & South Korea will be very helpful.” At the same time, the foreign ministers of Russia, China and India were meeting in China, where they took steps to prevent further escalation in the dangerous flare-up of military actions between India and Pakistan, provoked by the killing of 40 Indian soldiers by the Pakistan-based terrorist organization Jaish-e-Muhammad on Feb. 14.
This is the very real potential inherent in the great nations of the world working together, what Lyndon LaRouche has called the Four Powers of Russia, China, India and the U.S., in a new paradigm of peace through development.
And yet, in the United States, the enemies of peace and development are taking direction from London in a desperate effort to salvage the failing “Russiagate” coup against President Trump, while frantically attempting to drag the President into a new regime-change war—a process which Trump has sworn to end—this time in the Americas. An invasion of Venezuela would provoke a repeat of the chaos and mass death throughout the region, perhaps throughout the world, just as Tony Blair and George Bush unleashed with their Iraq War of 2003.
Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, warned yesterday at the emergency UN Security Council meeting on the crisis in Venezuela, that those nations going along with the insane neo-con circle around President Trump (Pompeo, Bolton, Pence) promoting regime change and a possible military intervention, were “accomplices in the violations of the UN Charter and international law.” He then asked those nations’ representatives: “Are you naive enough to think that you are immune to something of this sort? Have you not heard the claims of U.S. leaders that Cuba and Nicaragua are next? Do you think they will not come for you?”
Nonetheless, Ambassador Nebenzia has not given up on the United States. In his greeting to the Schiller Institute Conference in New Jersey on Feb. 16, Ambassador Nebenzia said: “The Schiller Institute is known for its valuable contribution to the understanding of international political processes, and development of new approaches to the global challenges. The conferences held under your auspices are respectful platforms, where the most urgent present-day issues can be discussed without politicizing and ideological clichés. We were very saddened by the bitter news about the passing of Lyndon LaRouche, the founder and inspirer of the Schiller Institute. We would like to express our deepest condolences to Helga Zepp-LaRouche, as well as to the relatives and colleagues. We are convinced that the paradigm of international, political, and economical intervention that he had proposed will be further developed by his apprentices and associates.”
With Trump committed to pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan, and on the verge of a totally new productive relationship with China and a new peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, the coup-plotters against Trump are panicking, staging a circus in the House of Representatives with the disgraced former lawyer for Trump, Michael Cohen. As Donald Trump Jr. told Fox News Tuesday night, referring to the Democrats staging this spectacle on national television: “Who doesn’t want peace in the Korean Peninsula? It’s crazy, but they show you that they really hate Trump more than they like America…. They just want Trump to fail, even if it means America fails.”
LaRouche’s Four Powers concept was not intended only to stop British geopolitical warfare, but also to create the minimum necessary array of forces, with other nations of good will joining in, to convene a New Bretton Woods conference. Only such a forum can replace the bankrupt Western monetary system with a creditary structure capable of financing a global New Silk Road development process. Without this new financial order, in the spirit of the New Silk Road, the danger of a global war driven by the dying old paradigm is practically inevitable.
Edward Lozansky, president of the American University in Moscow, wrote on Feb. 26 in the Washington Times that the world is sleepwalking into global nuclear war, and the process must be reversed. “A good start,” he wrote, “would be a trilateral summit of the leaders of U.S., Russia and China—or better yet, a quartet that includes India—to start work on parameters of a new, constructive international consensus. Everything depends on Mr. Trump, because the other troika members have already met and they would definitely accept his invitation. Such a move by Mr. Trump could not only turn around the sleepwalk toward nuclear war but would help solidify his 2020 win by reminding us why he was elected in the first place.”
This again reflects the power of truthful ideas initiated by Lyndon LaRouche being realized at crucial moments in history, when their truth becomes evident to those of good will.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Rep. Adam Schiff Holds Hearing To Attack ‘Authoritarianism’—Meaning President Trump
Feb. 27 (EIRNS)—Coinciding with President Donald Trump’s historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the pathetic Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff (D-CA) held a hearing yesterday that was a thinly-disguised attack on President Trump, and on any other nation—China and Russia were specifically mentioned—that fails to respect “Western liberal democracy.”
Entitled “Autocracy’s Advance and Democracy’s Decline: National Security Implications of the Rise of Authoritarianism Around the World,” the hearing brought together witnesses who share Schiff’s view that any nation questioning the value of neo-liberal democracy is bordering on fascism. These included former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (better called “All-Brit”), former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and Andrea Kendall-Taylor of the neo-con Center for a New American Security, among others, The Hillreported.
Albright, a fixture of the Clinton-Obama apparatus, used her remarks to rail against the “discarding of mainstream politicians, the emergence of leaders who seek to divide rather than unite, the pursuit of political victory at all costs, and the invocation of national greatness by people who identify greatness only with themselves.” She darkly warned that Trump’s actions may be weakening U.S. efforts to promote “democratic values” overseas.
The U.S., she said, has always served as a “rock against which the forces of despots run aground and break apart.” But now, she lamented, “we may no longer be able to make that claim.” Foreign leaders have told her, she said, that if the U.S. has a leader who always says the press lies, “how can Vladimir Putin be faulted for making the same claim? If America has a leader who insists that judges are biased, and who calls the American criminal system a ‘laughingstock,’ what is to stop a repressive leader in Hungary or Southeast Asia from discrediting his own judiciary?”
Rasmussen raved that tyranny “is awakening from its slumber,” and named Turkey, the Philippines, Hungary, Poland, Egypt, and of course China and Russia, where, he charged, authoritarianism is replacing democracy. Kendall-Taylor intoned that this “is the most trying time for democracy since the 1930s when fascism spread across much of Europe.”
Democrats’ Ploy with Michael Cohen to Subvert Trump’s Peace Effort in Korea
Feb. 27 (EIRNS)—The President of the United States today was meeting in Vietnam with Kim Jong Un for purposes of negotiating the end of the wars which have plagued Southeast Asia under British instigation since Franklin Roosevelt’s death. As opposed to the longstanding rule of American diplomacy, that political differences are left on the shore when the President is abroad, particularly when the President is negotiating war and peace, Washington was turned into a zoo on Feb. 27 by a staged Congressional hearing aimed directly at undermining the President’s efforts. In former days, the public would have been completely repulsed and incensed by this seditious Democratic spectacle, and there is every sign they will be so now if they understand what is at stake.
The British Empire led the effort to overturn the 2016 U.S. presidential election based on the complete lie and fabrication now known as Russiagate. It is clear that the Democrats know there is no proof of collusion and Russiagate was a fraud. But the British have sworn, in such places as the House of Lords Report, “U.K. Foreign Policy in a Shifting World,” that Donald Trump must not have a second term. That is the context of the two events of the day, Feb. 27, 2019, a potentially huge moment for the future of all of mankind undertaken by Donald Trump, and the cheap dirty tricks undertaken by an insane and Jacobin Democratic Party to prevent that.
In the annals of Congressional testimony, most public relations experts chalk up John Dean and Ollie North as pulling off scripted appearances which changed the course of events. Good theater in the fake public relations world of narratives. Not so with Clinton fixer Lanny Davis scrubbing of Michael Cohen for his appearance today in what is appropriately called the opening of the shit storm the Democratic Party proposes as appropriate impeachment proceedings for this President.
Admittedly, Davis was working with a client who has been convicted of multimillion-dollar tax evasion, bank fraud, and lying to Congress itself. The sole line of testimony the prosecutors in the Southern District of New York bought from Cohen involving Donald Trump was that Cohen tried to pay off two ladies of the night who claimed sexual relationships with Donald Trump, claiming it was a “campaign finance violation” by Cohen which Donald Trump allegedly knew about. The same prosecutors said in their sentencing memorandum that Michael Cohen had no remorse for his crimes, that he would consistently blame others for his own actions, and that he was seeking revenge for not getting a job in the White House.
According to Congressman Jim Jordan’s examination, Cohen even lied about delivering his own child, a statement his wife was forced to correct for the record. Michael Cohen also paid a firm to set up a Twitter account called “Women for Cohen” in which paid tweets were sent out of the variety: “in a world of lies and deceptions, thank god for Michael Cohen, #tgif, #honest, #sexy.” Cohen lied several times during the hearing itself, most dramatically concerning a statement under oath as part of his testimony, saying that he had no foreign contracts, when, in fact, he did. This completely obvious lie was papered over by Congressman Elijah Cummings, over heated objections from Republicans.
So, the Democrats presented endless statements from Cohen about the Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal payoffs, a claim that Cohen overheard a call between the President and Roger Stone about WikiLeaks, that Trump is a racist, that Trump inflated his finances to Deutsche Bank and for the Forbes millionaires’ list, that Trump lied about his taxes and many other things, along with multiple insinuations that Cohen was assisting prosecutors in the Southern District of New York in ongoing investigations of the President.
Cohen did not say he had any corroboration for the Stone/Trump conversation involving WikiLeaks and this also was obviously false. The conversation, portrayed as conveying “secret information” by Stone to Trump in July 2016, was actually information which had already been made public by Julian Assange back in June. Obviously, even Mueller didn’t buy Cohen’s insinuation since he did not charge Stone with it.
Cohen was forced to admit that Trump never told him to lie in testimony, instead stating that Trump somehow telegraphed what he wanted without ever saying it. The absurd premise underlying the entirety of Cohen’s testimony was that Donald Trump somehow runs a cult which first sucked in his previous staff in the Trump organization and now has sucked in his Administration and an entire nation. In fact, Cohen said almost exactly that in response to various Democratic Party interrogators. It is a corollary that the disassociated rage displayed by Cohen when confronted with his lies is typical of someone who has been deprogrammed, as happened with many witnesses in the LaRouche cases.
Otherwise, at the end of the hearing Congressman Jim Jordan summarized the lies which Cohen told in Wednesday’s hearing itself. He claimed that he never committed bank fraud when he was convicted of that crime. While claiming to be a good lawyer, he said he never considered whether the alleged payoffs to women were legal or the right thing to do. He admitted to recording his own clients and in fact, eagerly offered up the tapes if the Committee asked for them, regardless of attorney-client privilege. He gave two completely contradictory accounts of the $130,000 Stormy Daniels payment. He claimed that he did not set up the Women for Cohen Twitter account, when, in fact, he did. He claimed that he was not exercising revenge against Donald Trump for not giving him a job in the administration when, in fact, the prosecutors in the Southern District of New York confirmed that that was exactly the case. This was all in addition to the false report, signed under oath, concerning his foreign contacts cited by Congressman Mark Meadows.
Nikki Haley’s New ‘Stand for America’ Advocacy Group Claims China Is Greatest Threat to America
Feb. 27 (EIRNS)—Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, whose outsized political ambitions haven’t diminished since she left the UN, has set up an advocacy group, Stand for America (SFA), which describes China as the biggest foreign threat to America. Note, however, that despite her railings against Beijing, Haley was just hired to be on the board of Boeing Corp., one of whose important customers is China!
SFA’s website explains that this “donor-funded” organization will focus on issues such as border security and public safety; term limits; socialism; and American culture.
Its international component, however, focuses on allegedly serious “international dangers,” asserting that China, Russia and Iran are chief among them. China, it states, is “a communist dictatorship that is perhaps the world’s single worst human rights violator, taking surveillance and imprisonment of its citizens to truly Orwellian levels.” After retailing the litany of China’s supposed economic and currency crimes, SFA warns that “we must view China as a rival—and often a dishonest one—not just another trading partner who we can easily cooperate with.”
Haley’s anti-China rhetoric stands in stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s tweets issued on the same day, referring to the ongoing trade talks between the two countries. In his tweets, he said: “As a result of these … very productive talks, I will be delaying the U.S. increase in tariffs now scheduled for March 1. Assuming both sides make additional progress, we will be planning a Summit for President Xi and myself, at Mar-a-Lago, to conclude an agreement. A very good weekend for U.S. & China!”
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Russia’s Nebenzia Warns of Regional and Global Consequences of Any Military Intervention into Venezuela
Feb. 27 (EIRNS)—In a powerful intervention at the UN Security Council yesterday, called by the United States to discuss the Venezuelan crisis, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia warned of the dangerous strategic implications of any U.S.-led military intervention into Venezuela for the purposes of regime change. This, he said, could “entail the most severe and unpredictable consequencesfor the region and the entire world.” He urged all UN members to reject “gross interference” into Venezuela’s internal affairs. [Emphasis added.]
Nebenzia also delivered a stark message to those nations now supporting Venezuela’s “interim president” Juan Guaidó: “Are you naive enough to think you are immune to something of this sort? Have you not heard the claims of U.S. leaders that Cuba and Nicaragua are next? Do you think they will not come for you?” And, he added, this is not just a warning for Cuba and Nicaragua. It’s a warning for any nation that disobeys “Washington’s rules”; and those that do obey, “are accomplices in the violations of the UN Charter and international law,” and, should it occur, also in an armed intervention against sovereign Venezuela.
The Russian ambassador also denounced by name the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine, under the aegis of which the U.S. and its allies are using the pretext of humanitarian aid to seek regime change. R2P, which, he said, “is not recognized by international law,” was the Obama Administration’s preferred method to further British imperial goals internationally, as in in the Libyan case. [The resolution passed in the UNSC in 2005 on R2P said that the use of R2P was the sole prerogative of the UNSC—not individual nations.]
There are very strict protocols established by the UN General Assembly, Nebenzia explained, which specify how humanitarian aid can be delivered to any country, “with the consent of the affected country, and in principle, on the basis of an appeal by the affected country.”
In all cases, he said, “It clearly states: when carrying out humanitarian activities, I quote, ‘the sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity must be fully respected in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.’ ” Yet, in the “show” that took place on Feb. 23, these protocols were disregarded, replaced by an attempt to force “uninspected and uninvited American cargo” into Venezuela.
The Venezuelans were right to be suspicious about such “aid,” Nebenzia said. With Iran-Contra felon Elliott Abrams sitting across from him, representing the Trump Administration, he recalled that in 1986, “ ‘humanitarian aid for Nicaragua’ turned out to be a shipment of weapons for the ‘Contras.’ When we recall this episode today, we cannot escape a déjà vu.” If the U.S. had really wanted to provide humanitarian assistance, he said, it would have acted through the UN, as Russia just did in the previous week, delivering 7.5 tons of medicine to Venezuela through the World Health Organization.
At UNSC, Iran-Contra Felon Elliott Abrams Justifies Intervention in Venezuela ‘To Protect’ Population
Feb. 27 (EIRNS)—Speaking as the official U.S. representative at an emergency session of the UN Security Council, called yesterday by the United States, Iran-Contra felon Elliott Abrams, now Special Envoy for Venezuela, regurgitated the neo-con justification for regime change in Venezuela, citing the Feb. 23 “instability and violence” allegedly caused by the Maduro government.
The only way to end this tyranny, he pontificated, is through “free, fair and transparent elections, that embrace all sectors of society and all political parties.” Obviating the fact that any government imposed by a foreign intervention would be unviable, he even suggested that Guaidó’s forces could join with the “Chavistas” to rebuild the country.
The U.S. will introduce a resolution this week calling for new elections and for Nicolas Maduro to “peacefully” step down. That will most likely be vetoed by Russia.
Yesterday, speaking at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza suggested that President Donald Trump and Maduro sit down and work out a solution to the current impasse. “We’re going to propose the path of dialogue, and why not, a meeting between President Trump and President Maduro.” He also denounced “U.S. aggression” against Venezuela—sanctions, punitive economic measures—calling on those present to protest such unilateral measures. However, 60 cowardly members of the Commission, mostly Americans and Europeans, walked out of the room while Arreaza spoke.
Abrams ruled out dialogue of any sort, self-righteously proclaiming, “We question the purpose and likely outcome of so-called dialogue with someone who would rather block and burn donated medicine and bread than see it in the hands of the Venezuelan children.” He did feel compelled, however, to respond to the remarks by Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, to charge him with using “Cold War rhetoric!” Hotly rejecting the charge that the U.S. is planning military intervention, Abrams harrumphed that the U.S. had no reason to accept “accusations of military intervention from a country that is occupying the territory of Georgia and Ukraine, in South Ossetia, in Abkhazia, in Crimea. We do not accept such accusations of intervention.”
Pakistan and India Military Exchanges
Feb. 27 (EIRNS)—Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated when the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) responded to the Indian attack on a terrorist base in Pakistan-governed Kashmir by launching an attack on the Indian-governed region of Kashmir. Pakistan then claimed that it had shot down two Indian aircraft that allegedly violated the country’s airspace, according to Pakistan Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor writing on the official Twitter account of @OfficialDGISPR today. “In response to PAF strikes this morning as released by the MoFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs], the IAF [Indian Air Force] crossed the LOC [Line of Control]. PAF shot down two Indian aircraft inside Pakistan airspace. One of the aircraft fell inside AJ&K [Azad Jammu and Kashmir], while the other fell inside the IOK [Indian-Occupied Kashmir]. One Indian pilot arrested by troops on ground while two in the area.”
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement that Pakistan had “taken strikes at non military target, avoiding human loss and collateral damage. Sole purpose being to demonstrate our right, will and capability for self defense. We have no intention of escalation, but are fully prepared to do so if forced into that paradigm. That is why we undertook the action with clear warning and in broad daylight….”
The Indian Air Force, in turn, reported that it had shot down a Pakistani F-16 fighter jet, allegedly intruding into India’s airspace, according to a statement by India’s Foreign Ministry. The statement said one of India’s MiG-21s was downed in the engagement, whose “pilot is missing in action. Pakistan has claimed that he is in their custody. We are ascertaining the facts.”
Pakistan has shut down five airports, including in the capital of Islamabad, while India suspended flights to its state of Kashmir and Jammu and temporarily closed the airspace in northern India.
In another statement, today, on the Indian démarche to Pakistan’s Acting High Commissioner to India—i.e., the acting ambassador—India’s Ministry of External Affairs said, “A dossier was handed over to Pakistan side with specific details of JeM (Jaish-e-Muhammad terrorist group) complicity in Pulwama terror attack [in which 40 Indian soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber] and the presence of JeM terror camps and its leadership in Pakistan.”
In a brief televised address to the nation, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on Feb. 27 called for talks with India. “History tells us that wars are full of miscalculation. My question is that given the weapons we have, can we afford miscalculation,” Khan said. “We should sit down and talk.”
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement after speaking with the foreign ministers from Pakistan and India, said: “We encourage India and Pakistan to exercise restraint, and avoid escalation at any cost.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement urging restraint. Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters at a daily briefing on Feb. 27 that “both Pakistan and India are important countries in the subcontinent of South Asia.” He stated that China hopes “they will keep in mind the regional peace and stability, exercise restraint, take effective measures to strengthen dialogue, and maintain two sides’ fundamental interests and the regional peace and stability. We hope they will avoid deterioration of the situation.”
Also expressing grave concern, Russian Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said, “We are extremely concerned about the news coming in, we are very closely monitoring the situation and, of course, we urge all parties to show restraint.”
Associated Press had quoted India’s former ambassador to the United States and former Foreign Minister, retired diplomat Lalit Mansingh, today, that India’s policy of strategic restraint “is no longer” and that a new doctrine was established by India’s Feb. 26 pre-dawn airstrikes on Pakistani territory that Indian officials said targeted terrorist infrastructure.
Reasons Why the Ongoing India-Pakistan Fracas May Not Get Any Worse
Feb. 27 (EIRNS)—This week’s conflict between India and Pakistan over a suicide bomb attack on India’s paramilitary force, killing 40 personnel on Feb. 14 in Pulwama, in the Indian-Part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and carried out by a terrorist group based in Pakistan, resulted in the Indian Air Force making a deep foray inside Pakistan to bomb the terrorist group’s training ground and the subsequent retaliation by the Pakistani Air Force 24 hours later, crossing into the Indian air space with the intent to cause damage. How many lives were lost following the Indian Air Force’s bombing of the terrorist training camp is not known, but reports indicate that both the countries have lost one of their fighter planes and an Indian pilot has been captured by the Pakistani security officials.
These developments have revived a great deal of tension between these two old adversaries. However, there are reasons to believe that things may not get any worse. To begin with, both China and Russia, two major neighbors of India and Pakistan, have urged both the parties to exercise constraint. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has spoken to both the Indian and Pakistan foreign ministers and has urged the Pakistani foreign minister to take “meaningful action” against terrorist groups operating on Pakistan soil.
In addition, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), was in Pakistan, India and China last week. Although Saudi Arabia is reported to be continuing to fund the Sunni-based terrorists based inside Pakistan, MBS has signed very large investment deals in Pakistan, India and China. If, indeed, Saudi Arabia, as indicated by MBS, wants to broaden its economic relations with India and Pakistan, it will get very active in preventing further conflagration between the two. It is widely accepted that Pakistan cannot go to war with any country without receiving the green signal from the Saudis.
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