MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2019 Volume 6, Number 63 EIR Daily Alert Service P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390

• Open the Age of Reason
• Trump Says He Could Soon Open Discussions With Putin & Xi Jinping
• Giuliani Insists, ‘Uncover Phony Politicians’ and Criminality at Top of Russiagate Hoax
• VIPS Leader Larry Johnson Nails British Intelligence as Driver of Failed Russiagate Coup
• White House Neocons Bellow New Threats Against Venezuela, Russia
• Russia Warns of French, Belgian Chemical Provocation in Syria
• Italian Economy Minister Tria Warns of Threat of New Global Financial Crisis
• BDVSI, Pro-Silk Road Mittelstand Organization, Founded in Germany
• China Development Bank at Boao Forum, Boasts Financing Over 600 Belt and Road Projects
• China Announces Beginning Construction of Small Modular Reactors to Begin at Year End
• Space Nuclear Propulsion is Making a Come-Back
• Ibero-American Memorial for Lyndon LaRouche Schedules For April 11
• London Times Suddenly Recognizes That Lyndon LaRouche is Still Around

EDITORIAL

Open the Age of Reason

March 31 (EIRNS)—“There, in the stars, lies mankind’s entry into the long-awaited Age of Reason, when our species sheds at last the cultural residue of the beast.”—Lyndon LaRouche, 1985
 

President Donald Trump, in unveiling his five-year U.S. manned-Moon mission and Mars goals last week—doing so immediately after the collapse of the “Russiagate” coup against him—acted exactly as Lyndon LaRouche might have advised him.

This is a setback for the British beast, but it is still active and still working to shred the U.S. Constitution. It is time to go on to inflict its final defeat. Essential to this is to raise up the spirit and the standpoint of our fellow men and women, up to the level from which Earth’s problems can be solved—and the level at which many of Earth’s quarrels disappear. The level of the Solar System, and then of our Milky Way Galaxy which governs it.

The Moon-Mars mission, which is now active United States policy after Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, Krafft Ehricke, and other great leaders have sponsored it for decades, will raise up the human species to what LaRouche called a revolutionary new “platform.” Those who would bring this about, should study the interrelated ways in which science, industry and economy, as also education and culture, must interlace and unite in a well-designed crash program, to cause economic shock-waves of sudden advances. This not merely in the United States and other spacefaring powers—but in countries without space programs as well. LaRouche spelled this out in his 1985 “Private Initiative for Colonizing the Moon and Mars,” which will be reprinted in the coming April 5 EIR.

He began by estimating that for at least the next 50 years, “all scientific and technological progress will be shaped primarily by the interrelationship among three presently well-defined frontiers of scientific research: 1) controlled thermonuclear fusion, 2) coherently directed electromagnetic impulses, and 3) optical biophysics.” These are precisely the three core tasks required for interplanetary colonization! As LaRouche’s scientific and physical-economic reasoning progresses through this dense 12-page article, it becomes clear that there is nothing which could benefit the world’s economy more than commitment to this Moon-Mars mission—which today should be combined with the policy of Strategic Defense of Earth from extra-planetary threats.

Economic shock-waves will spread from special toolmaking workshops within industry, devoted to production at the most-advanced frontiers of science, as combined with rises and spikes in physical (not financial) levels of profit. From this angle, it becomes clear that our “make-anything” industry which we call the auto industry, will be revived not simply as it was in the past. It will build modular fission and fusion reactors among myriad other new products, while building and using tools based on scientific principles still unknown today.

Crash programs always depend upon young people. During the Apollo program, NASA’s average age was 27, and flight controller Gene Kranz was an elder statesman at 35. (Now it is 52.) Today, clearly, we have a great task ahead to rescue our youth from the effects of pernicious electronic entertainments, total miseducation, and drugs of all sorts.  It dwarfs the problem Franklin Roosevelt tackled with his CCC camps.  But having come this far, will we let that stop us—that or any other obstacle?

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Trump Says He Could Soon Hold Discussions with Both Putin and Xi

March 30 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump said he will be discussing possibly with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping soon. Commenting Friday to reporters, while in Florida, he said, “We will probably be talking at some point. I’ll be talking to a lot of people—perhaps President Putin, perhaps President Xi of China.”

The context for Trump’s comments includes the tense situation regarding Venezuela, fueled by U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton’s posting a White House statement on March 29, referring to the presence of “Russian military personnel” in Venezuela as a threat (more below). However, Bolton also said on March 29 that Trump was set to talk with Putin by phone soon.

Giuliani Insists, Uncover ‘Phony Politicians’ and Criminality at the Top of Russiagate Hoax

March 31 (EIRNS)—In an interview with Jeanine Pirro of Fox News on March 30, President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani blasted both current and former top officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice for the two-year “Russiagate” investigation, alleging Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia. “Over the next six months, we’re going to uncover evidence, I believe, that what they did here was criminal,” Giuliani said. “Somebody made this up, Jeanine. Somebody conceived this. And they superimposed it, and they went out and tried to prove it,” The Hill quoted him as saying in its March 30 coverage.

“And we have to find out: Who’s the brains behind this? Couple of, four or five possibilities. I think we’ll find them,” he told her, and further specified: “The people it indicts are the corrupted politicians at the top of the FBI and DOJ. No field office of the FBI is implicated in this. No agent who is sacrificing his life to protect us. It’s a bunch of these phony politicians at the top who corrupt themselves because they want to suck up to whoever’s in power.”

VIPS Leader Larry Johnson Nails British Intelligence as Driver of Failed Russiagate Coup

March 29 (EIRNS)—“The conspiracy against Donald Trump, in my opinion, originated with British intelligence and persons connected with the Clinton Campaign. The provocation/dangle of George Papadopoulos was the result of electronic intercepts by [British intelligence’s NSA equivalent, General Communications Headquarters] GCHQ targeting people working on the Trump campaign. The collection effort generated hundreds of highly classified ‘SIGINT’ messages that were disseminated in the U.S. intelligence community. Those messages led to the unmasking of more than 100 Americans whose names appeared in those reports. And this ‘intel’ dump from the Brits became the predicate for launching a counter intelligence investigation of Donald Trump and his campaign,” patriotic former CIA officer Larry Johnson, now active with the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), wrote on March 27, in the blog of Col. Pat Lang (ret.), “Sic Semper Tyrannis.”

Johnson gave that precise identification of the origination of the assault on the Presidency in his posting, “Time for Clapper To Go Under Oath.” The posting makes clear Johnson is not speaking as someone “out in the cold.”

“When the tale of the plot to destroy Donald Trump’s candidacy and Presidency is told, Jim Clapper will be proven as a key player in the conspiracy. Clapper was not a passive observer,” Johnson wrote. “I am told by friends who had direct dealings with Clapper during his tenure as the Director of National Intelligence that he was helping coordinate the activities of the CIA, the NSA and the FBI in the collection and dissemination of information on Trump and his associates.”

Johnson reviews the implications of recently released texts connecting “congenital liar” Clapper and then FBI agent Peter Strzok. But Strzok is not the key player, he argues; only “an important cog in the anti-Trump conspiracy machine” who was in regular contact with Clapper. Johnson suggests that Strzok, in fact, “could be considered a dupe,” who “accepted the British intel at face value and then was reinforced in his beliefs by the lies of MI6 officer Christopher Steele.”

Clapper, however, is no dupe. “When the investigation of this mess is completed, I believe Jim Clapper will emerge as a puppet master in pulling FBI strings and putting Trump under a cloud,” Johnson wrote.

Pat Lang, for his part, suggested on his blog March 26 that prosecuting Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence might generate useful intelligence since “Jimmy Clapper would quickly cave under pressure and seek to throw someone under the bus to save himself,” if he faced possible jail time. Clapper recently claimed that “Obama told me to do it.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

White House Neocons Bellow New Threats Against Venezuela, Russia

March 30 (EIRNS)—National Security Advisor John Bolton issued a formal statement on the White House website March 29, under his own name, condemning “Nicolas Maduro’s continued use of foreign military personnel to remain in power, including the introduction of Russian military personnel and equipment into Venezuela.” The two-paragraph menacing statement argues that this is a threat to “regional stability,” and goes on, “We strongly caution actors external to the Western Hemisphere against deploying military assets to Venezuela, or elsewhere in the Hemisphere, with the intent of establishing or expanding military operations.  We will consider such provocative actions as a direct threat to international peace and security in the region….”

He had said Friday night March 29 in a TV interview that “we’re not afraid to use the phrase Monroe Doctrine in this administration … if you look at the presence of Cuban and Russian forces in Venezuela.” He also said that the Trump Administration is considering imposing “secondary sanctions” on countries doing business with Venezuela were under consideration.

Also speaking out March 29 was U.S. Envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams, who gave a press conference. Though Abrams had to admit that the Russian contingent in Caracas is very small and probably only there to provide technical assistance to repair the S-300 defense system, he said its presence is “pernicious,” and that the potential impact, nonetheless, “is considerable.”

Asked about Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s earlier statement that the U.S. “won’t stand idly by” at the Russian presence, Abrams said that “we have a number of options,” both diplomatically and economically, including economic sanctions. “It would be a mistake for the Russians to think they have a free hand” in this situation, he warned. Abrams also made clear that the U.S. is prepared to impose sanctions on any other nation that continues to do business with Venezuela, as the goal is to strangle the Maduro regime financially. Abrams said the U.S. is telling nations, in a “non-threatening” way they could “get caught in the net” of U.S. sanctions, unless they cease all trade and financial dealings with Maduro.

On March 30, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded to Bolton’s statement and Abrams’ remarks, slamming Washington’s “ridiculous attempts to intimidate Moscow” over its legitimate defense cooperation with Venezuela. “There can be no talk of ‘military contingents’…. Speculation about Russia holding some kind of ‘military operations’ in Venezuela are completely groundless,” she said. Perhaps Washington’s sharp reaction is due to the fact that its “planned speedy coup in Caracas has not succeeded,” she suggested.

Russia Warns of French, Belgian Chemical Provocation in Syria

March 30 (EIRNS)—The head of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Reconciliation Center in Syria, Maj. Gen. Viktor Kupchishin accused the French and Belgian special services of preparing a chemical provocation in Syria in order to blame Russia’s Aerospace Forces. “In order to organize the provocations, agents of French and Belgian special services have arrived in Idlib. They met with field commanders of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and Hurras al-Din terrorist groups and representatives of the White Helmets pseudo-humanitarian organization,” TASS quoted him as saying at the end of last week.

Kupchishin said the faking of a video “allegedly demonstrating Russia and Syria’s use of chemical agents against the civilian population” were discussed at the meeting, as well as “a payment of $100 was offered to those willing to take part” in making those videos. He also warned that they might use real toxic substances, presumably against refugees and families to make the video realistic.

“On March 23, under the control of officers of French special services, a toxic substance, presumably chlorine-based, was delivered from the city of Saraqib to the towns of Khan Shaykhun, Maaret Horma and Kafr Zita (all in the Idlib governorate) under the guise of oxygen tanks and household gas cylinders,” he said.  He said that between March 14-27, officers of Belgian special services recorded videos of airstrikes by Russian warplanes on militant ammunition depots within the Idlib de-escalation zone, with the aim to “later use them as evidence of chemical weapons use.”

“Russia calls upon leaders of illegal armed groups to refrain from armed provocations and engage in peace settlement in areas under their control.”

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Italian Economy Minister Tria Warns of Threat of New Global Financial Crisis

March 29 (EIRNS)—Italy’s Economy Minister Giovanni Tria said on March 27 he feared the ongoing economic slowdown at a global level could trigger a new financial crisis, according to Reuters. “Everybody fears a financial crisis can translate into a global economic crisis. My opinion is … that the economic slowdown, especially if it were to worsen, could lead to a global financial crisis,” Tria said speaking on a panel at the annual conference of the Boao Forum for Asia in China, which took place March 26-29.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

BVDSI, Pro-Silk Road Mittelstand Organization, Founded in Germany

March 30 (EIRNS)—The BVDSI (Bundesverband deutsche Seidenstraßen-Initiative; Federal Association of the German Silk Road Initiative), a Mittelstand-centered initiative for cooperation with China’s New Silk Road, gathered an audience of 120 in Bremen March 29, to formalize its status and achieve a breakthrough in German politics, implying that the government ends its stonewalling on the issue. The meeting took place at the Bremen Chamber of Industry and Commerce. A detailed report on the event, though not without biases against China, appeared in the main regional daily, Weserkurier. The coverage includes a link to a 2.5-minute video animation of the positive impact of the New Silk Road.

Du Xiaohui, Consul-General of China in Bremen, addressed the event, taking the ongoing mainstream media campaign against China with humor, joking that he does not read that German newspaper with “the four capital letters” (BILD), because it’s too heavy for him, and he prefers other newspapers. He then presented the potentials and benefits of the New Silk Road, stressing China’s will to have a good cooperation with Europe. The many freight train connections between China with German cities such as Hamburg, Bremerhaven and Duisburg, he laid out, are a good alternative to the sea route, particularly in terms of the amount of time transports take. Already last year 45,000 containers were transported by rail along these routes. Particular areas in which cooperation between China and Bremen could be expanded are ocean research and other aspects of oceanic activities, Du said. He mentioned that altogether 124 countries have meanwhile signed cooperation agreements with China.

Hans von Helldorff, one of the main initiators of the BVDSI and its main speaker, said in his address to the event that “China does have its plan, and it will continue to pursue it—with or without Europe, with or without Germany. So far, $1 billion have been invested in projects in Asia, Africa and Europe,” and more projects with a total investment volume of $4 billion are in preparation, he said, and that the question how all of this would affect the global economy had to be discussed—a discussion in which BVDSI wants to play an important role. The BVDSI was created to represent the genuine interests of the German Mittelstand, particularly of the family-owned companies, in playing a constructive role in the countries along the New Silk Road, von Helldorff said. He emphasized that the Mittelstand wants the creation of real values and their potentials, which are also the main driver for any economic development.

China Development Bank, at Boao Forum, Boasts Financing over 600 Belt and Road Projects

March 29 (EIRNS)—On March 27, speaking at a panel discussion at the March 26-29 annual Boao Forum for Asia, China Development Bank (CDB) President Zheng Zhijie said his bank has already successfully financed over 600 projects in China’s Belt and Road Initiative since 2013, when the initiative was launched. The bank’s financed projects are reportedly worth more than $190 billion, Zheng said, reported Singapore’s Business Times.

The bank’s outstanding loans for international projects to BRI countries hit $105.9 billion by the end of last year, accounting for 34% of its total outstanding loans for international projects, Zheng told the panel discussion. In May 2017, the CDB set up a three-year special lending scheme worth 250 billion yuan (about $37.23 billion) to support BRI cooperation on infrastructure, industrial capacity and financing. By the end of February this year, lending via the special loan facility reached 480.7 billion yuan, of which 139 billion yuan was for infrastructure construction, Zheng said, Xinhua reported.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

China Announces Beginning Construction of Small Modular Reactors To Start at Year End

March 31 (EIRNS)—China’s Ministry of Environment is proceeding with environmental impact assessment for a project to build an ACP100 small modular reactor (SMR) at Changjiang, Hainan, with construction to begin by the end of this year. According to the Chinese publication Nuclear World, the first concrete is to be poured on Dec. 31, World Nuclear News reported. The construction of the SMR is expected to take a little less than five-and-a-half years, with the first electricity expected to be produced by May 31, 2025. Hainan is an island, and a high-tech center, which is also the site of China’s newest space launch complex, which will be open to the public and include facilities for tourists to watch launches, a museum, and a space theme park.

The 125 MW ACP100 was identified as a “key project” in China’s 12th Five-Year Plan, and is developed from the larger Generation III ACP1000 pressurized water reactor. The design, which has 57 fuel assemblies and integral steam generators, incorporates passive safety features and will be installed underground.

A number of countries, including the United States, Argentina, and Canada, among others, have begun actively developing small modular reactors. The Portland, Oregon-based company NuScale Power has announced that its design of a small modular nuclear reactor has completed the Phase 1 review of its design certification application by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. What NuScales’ SMR is offering is twelve 50 MW reactors combined, scaled-down versions of large light water reactors, that can be put together module-by-module to develop a generating capacity of 600 MW. (See EIR, “Mass Production of Modular Nuclear Reactors To Industrialize Developing Countries Until Fusion Power Comes Online,” Nov. 16, 2018.)

The S.3422 bill for rejuvenation of nuclear power in the United States, presented by a bipartisan group of Senators last week, pushed for rapid advancements in high-assay low-enriched uranium fuels, which several small modular reactors under development require, but for which no domestic production capability currently exists.

Lyndon LaRouche’s EIR article of Aug. 9, 1985, “Private Initiative for Colonizing the Moon and Mars,” makes an urgent appeal for development and mass-production of fission SMRs, to be followed by fusion SMRs. That article will be republished in the EIR of April 5.

Space Nuclear Propulsion Is Making a Come-Back

March 29 (EIRNS)—The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is requesting $10 million in FY20 to start a “Reactor on a Rocket” program. The goal is to develop a nuclear thermal reactor system, which the U.S. had under development in the 1960s. That project was shut down when the manned Mars mission was taken off the table. According to DARPA’s budget document, the nuclear-propelled rocket will “expand the operating presence of the U.S. in space to the cislunar space volume and enhance domestic operations to a new high-ground, which is in danger of being defined by an adversary.” (Clearly, this technology will be transferrable to space exploration endeavors beyond the Moon.)

The “Implementation” section of the document states: “The program will investigate on-orbit assembly techniques to safely assemble the individual [nuclear] core element subassemblies into a full demonstration system configuration, and will perform a technology demonstration.” No dates are mentioned in this brief description.

OTHER

Ibero-American Memorial for Lyndon LaRouche Scheduled for April 11

March 31 (EIRNS)—“It is meet and right that we celebrate the life and ideas of Lyndon H. LaRouche, and that we dedicate ourselves to realizing them, this April 11, just a few weeks before the Second Belt and Road Forum that will be held in Beijing, China. The Belt and Road Initiative, also known as the New Silk Road, has become, since its official launching by President Xi Jinping in 2013, a viable and necessary planetary alternative to the bankrupt and genocidal speculative banking system of London and Wall Street. Lyndon and Helga LaRouche proposed this same idea more than 20 years ago.”

So begins the invitation to an Ibero-American Memorial for Lyndon LaRouche, who passed away on Feb. 12, to be held by live video-conference among a half-dozen cities in South and North America, which will also be broadcast live on EIR Resumen Ejecutivosite, beginning at 7 p.m. EDT. The event will feature recorded video remarks by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, as well as comments by prominent political, scientific and cultural figures who knew Lyndon LaRouche and worked with him over the years.

The invitation also reports on LaRouche’s unjust incarceration, and states: “It is for that reason that, as we pay homage to Lyndon LaRouche, we also urge President Donald Trump to exonerate him…. Lyndon LaRouche was and is a Renaissance Man, not only because of the breadth and depth of his ideas; not only because his writings and advances in all areas of human knowledge are based on the great renaissances of the past; but also because his pioneering work has laid the basis for today’s required new renaissance—the establishment of a planetary New Paradigm of classical culture and science, a paradigm worthy of the creative and moral nature of the human species.

“Justice for the man is justice for his ideas.”

London Times Suddenly Recognizes that Lyndon LaRouche Is Still Around

March 29 (EIRNS)—A full six weeks after the passing of Lyndon LaRouche on Feb. 12, The Times of London has suddenly realized that death is no deterrent to the power of reason. Just days after Italy joined the New Silk Road, guided by close friends of LaRouche and with Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s personal role made public; just days after the British coup attempt against their former colony was destroyed, in large part because of the influence of LaRouche’s decades-long targetting of the British Empire as the prime enemy of the American Republic; and a cascade of similar operations around the world demonstrating LaRouche’s continuing influence; only now has The Times, the voice of the Empire, chosen to issue a wildly lying obituary of Lyndon LaRouche, published March 29.

The obituary does begin with a half-truth: “Lyndon LaRouche did not like the British.” Of course, LaRouche did not hate anyone—but he did hate the British Empire. The piece should be seen as a desperate effort to frighten off the growing numbers of nations and leaders who are embracing the ideas of this great man, and to prevent the success of the campaign to call on President Donald Trump to exonerate him.

The obituary records many of LaRouche’s pinpoint attacks on the Empire—the cultural warfare through the rock-drug counterculture; the role of the British-Saudi terrorist networks responsible for 9/11; and the British role in the assassinations of U.S. Presidents. But it says that the British are in good company, since LaRouche also denounced the likes of Henry Kissinger, the Bush dynasty, the Rothschilds, the IMF, environmentalists and more—all dearly beloved by the Empire.

They retail stale old lies about a “small but fanatical following,” moving from left to right, being a multimillionaire, and running for President just to gain federal matching funds.

But the giveaway is what they (falsely) call his “peak” of influence, supposedly in the early 1980s, when he “allied himself with the Republican right” when Ronald Reagan came to power, lying that LaRouche “became a vociferous supporter” of Reagan’s SDI—rather than the truth, that LaRouche recruited Reagan to the concept and served as Reagan’s emissary in an effort to gain cooperation in the project from the U.S.S.R.

Secondly, The Times snidely lies that LaRouche secured a meeting with Mexican President José López Portillo through mis-representation, because “López Portillo apparently believed LaRouche represented the Democratic Party.” One can be certain that when, some years later, López Portillo gave the advice that people would do well to “listen to the wise words of Lyndon LaRouche,” he was not confused. He did not mean, “listen to the Democratic Party.”

The Times then reports that LaRouche was convicted in 1987 (it was 1989) by “prosecutor Robert Mueller, who has been investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.” Mueller headed the “Get LaRouche Task Force,” but was not the prosecutor—but the Empire certainly wanted their readers to know that their trusted asset in the U.S. Justice System was doing the Empire’s bidding in regard to both LaRouche and Trump.

There will certainly be gnashing of teeth in London when the recent exoneration of Donald Trump is coupled with the exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche.

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