TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 2019

Volume 6, Number 54

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

Intense Chinese Diplomacy for the Belt and Road Initiative

Xi Jinping Encourages Italian Students To Be Cultural Ambassadors Between Their Two Nations

Conte Outflanks EU in Italian Parliament Debate on China Policy

China’s CGTN Runs EIR Coverage of Transaqua on Eve of Xi’s Visit to Italy

Trump Tweet on British Opens Spring Offensive Against the Coup

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EDITORIAL

President Trump Knows It’s a British Coup Against Him, but the American People, Not He, Can Defeat It

March 18 (EIRNS)—The London Independent, angry, headlined its coverage today of an even angrier British Foreign Office: “Trump: U.K. Government Hits Out at President’s ‘Completely False’ Suggestion Britain Invented Russia’s 2016 Election Meddling.” President Trump had just retweeted a message which said exactly that, that Russiagate was designed in part to help the British counter Russian influence, by baiting the United States into taking a hard line against Moscow. And that message in turn, retweeted one by Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who recognized Trump’s reluctant continuation of the permanent-war policy of Bush and Obama, as the direct result of the attacks of Russiagate which amount to a three-year-long running attempt at a coup. These important messages are reported in full below in this Alert.

This is clearly affecting the policies of Trump’s Administration, which are vectoring more and more toward the geopolitical confrontation with Russia and China which London and its allies want, and which Trump clearly did not want as a candidate or as President. The President publicly acknowledged that these McCarthyite attacks influenced his decision to walk out of the Hanoi summit with North Korea’s Kim without an agreement—specifically, the outrageous attacks on Trump in Congressional hearings with the perjurer Michael Cohen on the very day of that summit. They are threatening to cause the failure of his negotiations on trade and economics with China, despite his friendship with China’s President Xi Jinping.

These are neo-con attacks—and when we speak of liberal Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer or Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the McCarthyite-era term neo-conservative fits exactly—and the neo-cons are very much inside his administration. The British Empire, as they did with Harry Truman and tried to do with Dwight Eisenhower, are trying to use McCarthyism to force an American commitment to confrontation with great powers Russia and China, and wars in developing nations, even with a President who clearly was committed to ending those wars and attempting great-power cooperative relationships.

Trump sees the British attack but is not likely to defeat it personally. If the American people in large numbers see it, realize it is a British Empire coup attempt, and denounce it, it will fail.

There is a powerful weapon in that regard—the fact that the same attacks and worse, by the same persons including legal assassin Robert Mueller, were overcome by Lyndon LaRouche, and his ideas were bearing fruit internationally by the time of his death. Now LaRouche’s grand design for international development banks and a World Land-Bridge of great projects, is echoed in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the progress it is making against fierce London-centered opposition in Asia, Africa, and in Europe. His proposed Four Power agreement for space colonization, crash programs in nuclear and fusion power, is there to be implemented by China, India, Russia and the United States.

What is needed is to organize for President Trump to exonerate Lyndon LaRouche, from that London-ordered persecution, and his policies will really be set loose. President Trump can do this, and free himself in the process, but it has to be the demand of Americans and others.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Zepp-LaRouche Welcomes Belt and Road’s Advance in Germany, Impact of Italy

March 18 (EIRNS)—Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche tweeted this morning: “The Bremen-based Federal Association for a German #SilkRoad Initiative takes on Berlin blockheads as Italy’s bold #BeltandRoad effort impacts Germany.” Zepp-LaRouche had just returned from speaking in Milan on the importance of Italy’s projected Belt and Road Initiative memorandum of understanding with China, alongside Italian Undersecretary for Economic Development Michele Geraci. She had called it an act of truly historic importance, which would open up more.

This Federal Association of the German Silk Road Initiative (BDVSI), begun out of the city of Bremen, has announced that it will have its “founding meeting” March 29. But that is only because it took the Association 18 months to get registration with the Federal government in Berlin, and now they have finally pushed this through. BDVSI has been representing the Mittelstand economy of small and medium-size enterprises in Germany, unofficially, in New Silk Road countries throughout that time.

To quote from its release: “A central demand of the BDVSI on German and European policy is the creation of proper regulatory conditions in the countries of the New Silk Road. Berlin’s and Brussels’ current withholding of an active policy of cooperation with China is, in our view, wrong, indeed a counterproductive way to secure the beneficial interests of Germany and Europe.”

Notably, the BDVSI announced that it will be convening a first Silk Road Summit in Germany later this year.

President Putin Visits Crimea To Mark Fifth Anniversary of Reunification with Russia

March 18 (EIRNS)—Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Crimea on March 18 to participate in the celebration of the fifth anniversary of the region’s unification with the Russian Federation, reported TASS. He attended events in Sevastopol and Simferopol. Putin attended the start of the full operation of the Balaklavskaya and Tavricheskaya thermal power plants (TPP) in Crimea along with other officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, Energy Minister Alexander Novak, Head of the Republic of Crimea Sergei Aksyonov, and chief executive of the Rostec state corporation Sergei Chemezov. The total capacity of two power plants is now 940 MW, amounting to some 90% of region’s consumption.

Since unification, the Russian government has spent 877.8 billion rubles ($13.5 billion) for the construction of energy and water supply facilities, and for development of transport infrastructure.

Putin also met with President of the French-Russian Dialogue Association Thierry Mariani, who headed a delegation of French politicians in Crimea attending the celebrations. Mariani first visited Crimea to celebrate its reunification with Russia five years ago, when he was a National Assembly Deputy. President Putin told Mariani that Russia was prepared to lift its counter-sanctions if Europe lifted its sanction against Russia. “My answer will not make our Russian agricultural producers happy, but I have to tell you that if European sanctions are lifted, then we will definitely have to abolish tit-for-tat measures on our part, because there will be no original causes for their introduction,” Putin said. “These abnormal economic relations, distorted because of political considerations or spoiled with use of political instruments, such as unfair competition, eventually bring damages to everyone.”

TASS further reports that Chinese businesses are also interested in involving Crimea in the Belt and Road Initiative, head of the association of Chinese compatriots on the peninsula Ge Zhili reported today.

“Our organization is bolstering cooperation ties, exchanges, and friendly contacts with all the layers of the Crimean society,” he said at the event in Beijing, held at the Russian Embassy, dedicated to the fifth anniversary of Crimea’s reintegration into Russia. “To help people understand what Crimea is, start cooperation with it, establish reliable relations with the peninsula, develop friendly contacts with it and implement joint private projects under the Belt and Road Initiative.”

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Trump’s Re-Tweets Infuriate His British Empire Enemies in ‘Russiagate’

March 18 (EIRNS)—Today President Donald Trump commented in his own tweet, on tweets from both Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and William Craddick (founder of Disobedient Media), which declare that Russiagate is a hoax—more, a British hoax.

On Monday, March 18, at 8:07 a.m., President Trump tweeted:

“Wow! A Suffolk/USA Today Poll, just out, states, ‘50% of Americans AGREE that Robert Mueller’s investigation is a Witch Hunt.’ @MSNBC Very few think it is legit! We will soon find out?”

He had earlier included William Craddick’s retweet of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s Saturday morning Twitter message from @tulsigabbard: “Short-sighted politicians & media pundits who’ve spent last 2 years accusing Trump as a Putin puppet have brought us the expensive new Cold War & arms race. How? Because Trump now does everything he can to prove he’s not Putin’s puppet—even if it brings us closer to nuclear war.” 9:17 a.m.—16 Mar 2019

And the President had also retweeted a Sunday tweet by William Craddick, the founder of Disobedient Media, who had sent a message similar to Representative Gabbard’s. Craddick tweeted: “Russiagate was designed in part to help the UK counter Russian influence by baiting the United States into taking a hard line against them. Leaves us all with a more dangerous world as a consequence. Just another episode of the Great Game.” 11:40 a.m.—17 Mar 2019

Stung, Britain’s Independent today ran an article covering the Twitter action around the British role in the Russiagate coup attempt. The Independent reported, “Mr. Trump’s endorsement of the explosive claim Britain was involved in a conspiracy to create ‘Russiagate’—a term commonly understood to refer to Russia’s meddling in the presidential election—represents another extraordinary swipe by the president at the U.K.” It is indeed.

Hong Kong Paper Sees Trump-Xi Summit Off to June

March 18 (EIRNS)—Despite all the nostrums about how well the U.S.-China trade negotiations are going, repeated by administration officials and President Donald Trump himself, there is no guarantee that any agreement will be signed while the President is under the influence of administration figures whose goal is to “punish China”—as it also is to “punish North Korea” and “punish Russia.”

An article posted March 18 by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post cites unnamed sources in China as forecasting that a summit at Mar-a-Lago between Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping—which had slipped from late March to April—is not likely before June. “It may be put back to June, sources have said, as they will not be able to finalize an agreement by April.” The paper also has sources who suggest divergences between Trump and parts of his “team.” “The main division within the White House is how much importance will be attached to an enforcement mechanism to ensure the Chinese side lives up to its side of the bargain, or whether it will be enough to secure an agreement in principle and declare success,” it continues.

If a trade agreement does elude America and China completely, theSCMP and other sources are agreed that the poison pill will have been the “enforcement mechanism” designed by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer (see EIR Daily Alert for March 18, 2019).  The paper does not suggest it has been told of a Trump/Lighthizer split, carefully implies that President Trump, now watching a sharp U.S. economic slowdown out of the corner of his eye, may be the one who now wants to declare success. Lighthizer does not; and the current gutter level of thinking in the U.S. Congress prefers to see a failure.

SCMP says “Beijing was alarmed by the proposals and argued that enforcement must be two-way, fair and equal. The tough stance taken by Washington’s top trade negotiator has won bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress.”

Trump cannot reasonably expect China to accept Lighthizer’s enforcement scheme. The standoff could become protracted.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

NATO Sleepwalking into War with Russia

March 18 (EIRNS)—NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg frequently refers to NATO as a defensive alliance not aimed at anyone, but the alliance’s own actions, often with Stoltenberg’s approval, suggest that it is sleepwalking into World War III against Russia. A number of developments of the past days reinforce that impression.

• In an interview with the German-based syndicated Funke Media Group, Stoltenberg said that the world would not be safer if NATO dropped plans for nuclear weapons, while Russia and China were keeping their arsenals and even increasing them. U.S. nuclear weapons on the territory of the non-nuclear powers in Europe would send out a message against any potential aggressor that the Europeans would be protected, he claimed.

• The deployment of at least four B-52 bombers to RAF Fairford in Cotswold, England, at the end of last week, is being played up by the British press as some kind of message to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Watch Out, Putin!” blared the Daily Mail, in the headline of its report on the arrival of the bombers. One B-52 was already tracked by the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces coming within 150 km of Russian territory while flying over the Baltic Sea on March 15.

• The Daily Mail tried to connect the arrival of the B-52s to a NATO exercise in Georgia, dubbed NATO-Georgia Exercise 2019, which began today and will run through March 29. In fact, the exercise is a command-level exercise with only 350 personnel participating, so B-52s will likely not be involved; but, it is intended to help the Georgian military come closer to NATO standards. Georgian membership in NATO is a red line for Moscow.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Russian Academy of Sciences President Ready for ‘Brainstorming’ with U.S. Colleagues

March 18 (EIRNS)—The delegation from the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) which has been visiting the United States for more than a week, has completed what appears to have been a very successful tour and sets an example of U.S.-Russian cooperation. Commenting on the visit, RAS President Alexander Sergeyev told TASS that the RAS and their American colleagues are ready to hold “brainstorming” sessions.

“We are going back to Russia with a message that, as far as science is concerned, we are still interested in each other and ready for cooperation at various levels. We have agreed to introduce brainstorming task forces into our cooperation,” he said.

They propose to have groups of 10-15 people “gather together for a day or two, or for a couple of weeks, lock themselves away and start discussing a certain field of study, experiments’ results and trends. They work in a brainstorming mode. Then the participants outline plans for the future and decide who will do what,” Sergeyev explained, saying that countries capable of encouraging their leading experts to conduct brainstorms set trends in science.

Commenting on a reversal of a Russian decision taken in 2013, disallowing academic exchanges with other countries’ academies of sciences, Sergeyev said: “New laws give us a chance to do it, so we hope that we will be granted a budget to that end. We have already made plans to hold the first five brainstorming sessions this year, which will particularly deal with climate issues, space and space medicine.” The delegation met with the American National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and signed a five-year agreement with them on March 13, marking the 60th year of their cooperation.

“Besides, we discussed two joint task forces with NASA, one of which concerns Venus, and the second one is related to the Moon program. Our American colleagues suggested that the first task force meet in October and the second one next year. Our colleagues from the California Institute of Technology are ready for a brainstorming session on the next generation of gravitational wave detectors,” Sergeyev said.

The delegation also visited the California Institute of Technology, where they held a meeting with David Reitze, the Executive Director of the Laser Interferometric Gravitational Wave Observatory, which was the first to record gravitational waves in 2015.

The RAS president said, “We did practically everything we had planned, holding meetings, talks, and signing an agreement. We have made plans for future cooperation with the U.S. Academy of Sciences and NASA. Importantly, despite political and diplomatic tensions with the United States, relations between scientists haven’t changed much. We continue to hold interesting and meaningful meetings.” Sergeyev pointed to the warm welcome the Russian delegation had received in the U.S. “We didn’t see any change in the attitude of our colleagues.”

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Germany’s Mittelstand Firms Need the Belt and Road, They Should Avoid Deutsche Bank!

March 18 (EIRNS)—In 2015 Germany’s leading London bank, Deutsche Bank, was already failing through massive losses of its speculative investment bank, combined with large criminal fines looming on the horizon due to the operations of the same division, across Europe and in the United States. At that time Lyndon LaRouche proposed the one way to save Deutsche Bank: a government investment or partial nationalization under conditions of Glass-Steagall reorganization of the bank, writing off investment bank assets and returning to the bank’s nation-building credit policies under Chairman Alfred Herrhausen through the 1980s.

Having twice promised to “downsize” the investment bank and failed to do so—once under British CEO John Cryan and then under his successor Christian Sewing—Deutsche Bank has now gone into merger negotiations with Commerzbank.

The headlines about this discussion are of 30,000 more job losses from the 140,000 total employment which remains at Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank combined. No one is yet talking about a German government bailout which will likely be required to absorb the Deutsche Bank investment bank’s bad assets, if not written off.

But a Bloomberg analysis published March 17 should be a warning to every family-owned small and medium-sized firm in Germany and surrounding countries—what are known as the Mittelstand—to stay away from the potentially merged “Deutsche Commerzbank” or “DeuCoBa” (the name itself!). Stressing that both banks may be “too feeble to benefit from the merger,” Bloomberg has the following comment promising the most blatant violation of the Glass-Steagall principle of sound banking regulation: “[Deutsche Bank’s investment bank] operation still accounts for about two-thirds of the overall firm’s risk-weighted assets after soaking up billions in fines for misconduct…. Commerzbank doesn’t have much of a securities business itself, having refocused on German consumers and small and medium-sized businesses, the backbone of the domestic economy. For Deutsche Bank, the thinking is that the tie-up will provide a deeper deposit base and so help to lower its funding costs. That should help the bank to compete more aggressively in securities trading.”

Go with the Belt and Road Initiative for economic growth and productive investment; avoid the “DeuCoBa.”

OTHER

Stimson Center Launches Attack on China’s Development of the Mekong River Region

March 18 (EIRNS)—Brian Eyler, the director of the Stimson Center’s Southeast Asia Program in Washington, has released a book Last Days of the Mighty Mekong, which is openly reported to be a diatribe against China’s vast development policies in the Mekong region. Eyler travelled the distance of the Mekong (Lancang in China) from its headwaters in the Tibetan Plateau to the delta in Vietnam, reporting back a typical greenie tirade against development as disturbing the primitive way of life. The Stimson promo reads: “Along the way he meets the region’s diverse peoples, from villagers to community leaders, politicians to policymakers. Through conversations with them he reveals the urgent struggle to save the Mekong and its unique ecosystem.”

The promo for the book reads: “China’s development policies aim to interconnect the region through high-speed transportation networks and to transform its people into modern urbanized consumers [horror of horrors!—ed]. By 2025 a series of dams will have harnessed the river’s energy, bringing an end to its natural cycles and cutting off food supplies for over half of the basin’s population…. China’s expansionist policies are drastically—and often literally—reshaping environments. He also highlights the work being done by locals and international groups to save the Mekong and its fragile ecosystem. Eyler makes the case that there are environmentally-sound solutions, but argues these can only come about from serious cooperation and an increased pressure from the international community.”

Eyler is presenting the paperback edition of his book today at George Washington University; he earlier presented it on Feb. 19, at the Stimson Center.

The Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Forum, founded in 2016 by China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, has in fact functioned well to oversee the cooperation of all parties, bringing development to the region, in keeping with the Belt and Road “win-win” approach to mutual development.