THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2019

Volume 6, Number 71

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

• Pompeo Goes Abroad to Beat China at Development While Failing US. Infrastructure Kills at Home!
• Trump Raises ‘Treason,’ While Barr Confirms ‘Spying Did Occur’ on President
• Putin Remarks on Mueller’s ‘Russiagate’ Report-‘the Mountain Gave Birth to a Mouse’

• Secretary Pompeo Touring Ibero-America, To Shore Up Guaido and Counter the Belt and Road
• Rep. Thomas Massie Slams John Kerry’s Climate Pseudo-Science: We Are All Hitler Now?
• Russia Offers India Technology Help for Its First Manned Mission
• Putin Lays Out Ambitious Plans for Arctic Development to 2035
• Kaptur Introduces H.R. 2176 ‘To Restore Glass-Steagall Act’
• Economists Find That Trump Is-And EIR Always Has Been-Right About Manufacturing
• Netanyahu Indictment Hearings Going Forward

EDITORIAL

Pompeo Goes Abroad To ‘Beat’ China at Development, as Failing U.S. Infrastructure Kills at Home!

April 10 (EIRNS)—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo leaves tomorrow on a five-day fool’s errand to Ibero-America, seeking, with meager funds for development, to denounce and expel China from the region. A region in which it has become, for many countries, the largest foreign investor and the largest trading partner, while the Bush and Obama governments acted as regime-changers and collectors for Wall Street debt vultures and hedge funds. The failure of Pompeo’s “mission” may have been predetermined by his crucial omission, as CIA Director in 2017—withholding crucial evidence that the “Russiagate” coup attempt against President Donald Trump was based on a fraud at the start. Pompeo at that time had been personally presented—in a meeting at the President’s request—with hard evidence from a senior expert that the core claim, that the Russians had hacked DNC computers, was false. It never went beyond CIA Director Pompeo to any other intelligence services or to any committee of Congress. “Russiagate,” instead, raged on.

The President this morning called “Russiagate” a “coup to bring down a President,” and called it treason, which implies involvement of a foreign power as instigator. His recent Twitter messages have shown he understands British intelligence, MI6 and GCHQ, were initiators at the start of the attempt to force him out. Attorney General William Barr told the Senate Appropriations Committee today about that the fact Trump and his campaign were spied on: “spying on a political campaign is a big deal—it’s a big deal.”

And Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking at plenary of the Arctic Forum in St. Petersburg, made clear that he understands that Russian-American relations can be restored to joint pursuit of peace and disarmament, and defeat of terrorism, only if the “intrigue” of Russiagate is purged.

President Trump has stated publicly that his actions in the temporary failure of the Hanoi summit with North Korea, were directly affected by the then-ongoing “Russiagate” antics of House Committees. In fact, all of Trump’s intended policies of great-power cooperation for peace and economic development, including intended economic collaboration with China as well, depend on the complete exposure and punishment of those who started and ran the “Russiagate” coup attempt.

Thus, the tragic farce of Pompeo’s attempt to drive China out of developing countries with promises of aid in infrastructure development.

Not only did his actions or omissions contribute to driving President Trump to accept constant sanctions, attacks, threats against China and Russia by neoconservatives like Pompeo, and sabotage the President’s own attempts to end war in Syria, Afghanistan, the Korean Peninsula.

His “mission” itself is farcical because the long-neglected and abandoned basic economic infrastructure of the United States itself, which could be called merely “crumbling” 20 years ago, is now being hit with repeated outright failures resulting in thousands of deaths and massive economic damage. The worst breakdowns result from the fact that plans to engineer major flood- and storm-protection have been cast aside for half a century or more, “for lack of funds.”

What development lending and funds can the United States then offer nations in Africa, Southwest Asia or Ibero-America, unless it is by cooperation with the other great powers, particularly China which is doing far, far greater work with the New Silk Road? New international credit institutions must be set up, as Lyndon LaRouche proposed for 40 years and China has begun—which requires the United States have a national credit institution itself for infrastructure and industrial development—it has none. It must, in fact, join the Belt and Road.

For this, President Trump’s full liberation from the British coup attempt is key. It must be pursued using Lyndon LaRouche’s economic policies and his exoneration.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Trump Raises ‘Treason,’ While Barr Confirms ‘Spying Did Occur’ on President

April 10 (EIRNS)—Speaking to journalists when departing from the White House for Texas this morning, President Donald Trump, welcoming the April 9 report from Attorney General William Barr said that a Justice Department investigation of the origins of “Russiagate” is underway. Trump said that treason had been committed in this fraudulent attack on the Presidency, a charge which implies a foreign adversary is the driver. This at a time the instigation of the British Empire’s intelligence agencies is becoming more and more prominent.

On April 9 before the House Judiciary Committee, Barr had said, “I am reviewing the conduct of the Russia investigation, and all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted in the summer of 2016.”

Trump’s comment this morning was: “It was an illegal investigation. It was started illegally. This was an attempted coup, an attempted takedown of a President. So the Mueller report, when they talk about obstruction, we fight back, because I knew how illegal this whole thing was.” Then after a question: “Hopefully, the Attorney General—he mentioned it yesterday—he’s doing a great job—is getting started on going back to the origins of exactly where this all started, because this was an illegal witch hunt and everybody knew it, and they knew it too. And they got caught.

“And what they did was treason. What they did was against our Constitution and everything we stand for.

“So hopefully that will happen. There is a hunger for that to happen in this country like I have never seen before, including all of the millions of people that voted for me.”

Today before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Barr again brought up the investigation of the investigators. He was asked, “You’re not suggesting that spying occurred?” After a long pause, Barr replied, “I think spying did occur. But the question is whether it was adequately predicated, and I am not suggesting that it wasn’t adequately predicated, but that I need to look at that. I am not suggesting those rules were violated, but I think it is important to look at that. And I am not talking about the FBI necessarily, but intelligence agencies more broadly. I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal—it’s a big deal.”

Putin Remarks on Mueller’s ‘Russiagate’ Report—‘the Mountain Gave Birth to a Mouse’

April 10 (EIRNS)—Commenting on the fiasco of the final report by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Russian collusion, Russian President Vladimir Putin characterized it as “The mountain gave birth to a mouse.”

“From the very beginning we said that this notorious commission led by Mr. Mueller won’t find anything, because no one knows better than us: Russia has not meddled in any U.S. election, there was no collusion between Trump and Russia, which Mr. Mueller had looked for,” Putin told the plenary session of the International Arctic Forum in St. Petersburg on April 9.

“This is total nonsense aimed mainly at the domestic audience and used in the domestic political struggle in the U.S. itself,” Putin stressed, reported TASS. “That’s why it was clear for us beforehand that this [commission] would end so—as the saying goes, ‘the mountain gave birth to a mouse.’ ”

However, Putin expanded on the ongoing deterioration of the U.S. political situation, with the attacks, from both inside and outside the government, on the U.S. President: “Look at what is happening. The groups that are attacking the duly elected President do not agree with the choice made by the American people. They are nullifying the result.

“This amounts to a crisis of the political system. We have never seen anything like this in U.S. history before. Yes, there may be a fierce campaign but once a nominee wins, everyone accepts it. This was always the case and all people united around the head of state to meet common national challenges. We are not seeing anything of the kind in the U.S. now. On the contrary, the rift is deepening.

“Do you understand what happened? They put their group or party interests above the national interest. This is what happened.”

On the prospects for improving U.S.-Russian relations, Putin replied: “I feel that many bilateral matters are currently perceived under the pressure of the domestic political situation. We hope when the situation gets back to normal, prospects will open for cooperation, including bilateral, on the issues I mentioned. And they include terrorism, epidemics and the environment. Actually, there are many issues, including arms control.

“I think we are all interested in that but we will start working when the conditions in the U.S. are right. It does not depend on whether we want it or not. … We respect the choice of the American people. We are ready to work with their President whoever it might be.”

Secretary Pompeo Touring Ibero-America, To Shore Up Guaidó and Counter the Belt and Road

April 10 (EIRNS)—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tomorrow will embark on a four-nation tour of Ibero-America—Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Colombia—to shore up support for the unelected “interim” Venezuelan president Juan Guaidó, while also boasting that the U.S., not China, is the best partner to provide economic development aid to the region.

The purpose of the trip, according to a senior State Department official who briefed reporters yesterday, is to “show our commitment to the Western Hemisphere,” which, “is our partner of choice.” The anonymous official insisted that, unlike China, the United States follows principles of fairness in trade and transparency and, of course, “debt sustainability.”

This would appear to be a pathetic attempt to counter the Belt and Road Initiative, whose growing involvement in the region has Wall Street and the City of London quite worried. The State Department official boasted about the International Development Finance Corporation, which will be officially launched in October for Ibero-America, and reportedly will provide “private sector-focused initiatives” in the amount of $60 billion. What the official neglected to mention, however, is that this very same “new” financing entity has already been announced for Asia and the Middle East, and that the $60 billion figure is for global investment, not for any individual region. He further bragged that the “America Crece” (America Grows) program will “facilitate and catalyze private sector energy and infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Rep. Thomas Massie Slams John Kerry’s Climate Pseudo-Science: We Are All Hitler Now?

April 10 (EIRNS)—Former Secretary of State John Kerry appeared before the House Oversight Committee yesterday to deliver an hysterical diatribe against anyone—President Donald Trump was his key target—who would dare to question the idea of man-made climate change, and the noxious presence of CO2 in the atmosphere.

While the other witness, former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, offered far more moderate testimony, Kerry went off the rails. Why, he pontificated, during World War II, “America would never have tolerated leadership that denied Hitler’s aggression. During the Cold War, no one in public life would have been taken seriously if they didn’t offer a policy to counter the Soviets.” Following this logic, those who would even question the existence of man-made climate change, or that CO2 levels are the highest in the history of the planet, must therefore be Hitler-lovers or pinkos.

Kerry didn’t stop there, but went on to attack President Trump’s proposed climate science panel as a “kangaroo court,” claiming it is just a scheme to “pretend there are two sides to an issue already long-since settled … facts are facts. But here we are in 2019, where too many in positions of responsibility still call climate change a hoax and advocate policies that will only make the reality of climate change even worse.” Everyone agrees, he went on, especially the military and intelligence communities, that climate change is a grave national security threat. And returning to the red-baiting, stressed: “Mr. Chairman, the only people cheering the President’s apparent attempt to erase climate change from U.S. national security considerations, live in Beijing and Moscow.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who is thoroughly informed on matters of real science—both his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and graduate degree in mathematical engineering are from MIT—was having none of this. As Kerry blathered on about allegedly unprecedented CO2 levels, the worst “in 800,000 years,” Massie demonstrated that CO2 levels today are actually far lower than the average that has existed since mammals lived on Earth. To Massie’s scientific counter, Kerry’s limp reply was, “Yeah, but we weren’t walking the planet then.” Kerry ultimately gave up name-calling, to whine, “Well, this is not a serious conversation.” No, returned Massie to much applause, “your testimony is not serious. When you can’t answer the question, that’s the best answer you got.”

Massie also noted that Kerry had graduated from Yale with a degree in science, but, as Kerry corrected him that his Yale degree was in political science, or in “liberal arts.” “I think it’s somewhat appropriate,” Massie said, “that somebody with a pseudo-science degree is here pushing pseudo-science in front of our committee today.”

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Russia Offers India Technology Help for Its First Manned Mission

April 10 (EIRNS)—Last August, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi directed the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to launch the first Indian astronauts into Earth orbit by 2022. That would make India the fourth country to do so, after Russia, America, and China.

One month after Modi’s announcement, India and Russia signed a memorandum of understanding on space cooperation, and Russia offered to help with astronaut training. It suggested that if India could support it financially, Russia could send an Indian astronaut to the ISS, to get some “real life experience” in space.

ISRO has flown many classes of rockets and launched numerous satellites into space. But now it must create all of the technology that is necessary to sustain humans in space.

Yesterday, Sputnik reported, Glavkosmos Director General Dmitry Loskutov said that Russia will help India with life support and radiation shielding for the spacecraft that will carry the crew of at least two.

“Russian space industry experts intend to assist [India] in the creation of spacesuits, spacecraft seats, life support systems for crew members, protection from radiation and space debris, and in the training of Indian astronauts,” he said. Glavkosmos is a subsidiary of Roscosmos that works with foreign agencies.

Russian technology has also made crucial contributions to the development of the Chinese manned space program.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Putin Lays Out Ambitious Plans for Arctic Development to 2035

April 10 (EIRNS)—In his speech before the plenary session of the Fifth International Arctic Forum (“The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue”), Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed long-range plans for the development of the Russian Arctic region, up through 2035. Today, he said, the Arctic accounts for over 10% of all investment in the Russian Federation.

Putin reported that much emphasis is being placed on the development of transportation and related infrastructure, as this is crucial for all future investment and business initiatives. He noted that a federal law is being drafted on a special system of preferences for the Arctic zone’s investors. The powers of the Ministry for the Development of Russia’s Far East have been expanded, and plans are underway to expand the work of Far Eastern development institutions. It will be necessary as well to establish a powerful research, human resources and technological foundation for the comprehensive development of the region.

In addition, scientific and educational centers are being set up in various Russian regions, to integrate capabilities of universities, research institutes, the business community, and “the real economy.” One of the Arctic regions will have such a center, to ensure development of fundamental research and help “address the applied and practical tasks of developing the Arctic.”

Putin pointed to several projects whose development is a priority. These include construction of the Northern Latitudinal Railway, which will connect Western Siberia to ports on the Arctic Ocean. Development of the global transport corridor that includes the Northern Sea Route will also continue, so it can ultimately function on a year-round basis.

Boosting freight traffic, up to 80 million tons by 2025, is also a key goal. Ten or fifteen years ago, Putin said, this goal would have seemed impossible, but today it is feasible. As of 2018, traffic volume on the Northern Sea Route reached 20 million tons—three times higher than the 1987 record set by the U.S.S.R. Communication and coastal infrastructure, including port facilities, and navigational and meteorological aids, will also be developed to ensure that the corridor can operate at full capacity, Putin stressed.

The Russian President also underscored that foreign partners are encouraged to participate in building hub ports at the end points of the route, such as the Murmansk transport hub and port infrastructure in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Moreover, Arctic coast harbors, and river-sea traffic capabilities will be upgraded.

Putin’s speech and some of the Q&A are translated on the Kremlin website.

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Kaptur Introduces H.R.2176 ‘To Restore Glass-Steagall Act’

April 10 (EIRNS)—Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), on April 9, as the House Financial Service Committee was holding a largely toothless hearing of major Wall Street bank CEOs, introduced a bill to restore the Glass-Steagall Act into the 116th Congress. The bill, H.R.2176, had 25 originating cosponsors, all Democrats, who are listed below. In addition, Kaptur was publicly supported by the AFL-CIO, Communications Workers of America, Public Citizen, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, and Take On Wall Street.

Representative Kaptur said that among other provisions, “The Return to Prudent Banking Act amends the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (FDIA) to prohibit any insured depository institution from being an affiliate of any broker or dealer, investment adviser, investment company, or any other person or entity engaged principally in the issue, flotation, underwriting, public sale, or distribution of stocks, bonds, debentures, notes, or other securities.”

The act would allow a maximum of two years for separation and divestiture. It “Requires the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Comptroller of the Currency, or another appropriate federal banking agency to report to Congress a detailed description of the basis for its decision each time it makes a determination or grants an extension concerning such bank separation.”

And it expands its prohibitions of the original 1933 Glass-Steagall Act against the transaction of deposit-and-loan banking activities by securities firms.

Originating cosponsors are Rep. Rosa DeLauro (CT-3); Rep. Susan Wild (PA-7); Rep. Stephen Lynch (MA-8); Rep. Ro Khanna (CA-17); Rep. Jackie Speier (CA-14); Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12); Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL-9); Rep. Peter DeFazio (OR-4); Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC-At-Large); Rep. Jim McGovern (MA-2); Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN-5); Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (HI-2); Rep. Steve Cohen (TN-9); Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA-7); Rep. Chellie Pingree (ME-1); Rep. David Cicilline (RI-1); Rep. Anna Eshoo (CA-18); Rep. Paul Tonko (NY-20); Rep. Peter Welch (VT-At-Large); Rep. Barbara Lee (CA-13); Rep. Grace Napolitano (CA-32); Rep. Mark Pocan (WI-2); Rep. Raul Grijalva (AZ-3); Rep. John Yarmuth (KY-3); Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-40).

Economists Find That Trump Is—and EIR Has Always Been—Right About Manufacturing

April 10 (EIRNS)—The New York-based business news website Quartz carries on May 3 a significant takedown of modern economists’ claims about the wonders of automation and the IT/tech sector. The article by Gwynn Guilford, “The Epic Mistake About Manufacturing That’s Cost Americans Millions of Jobs,” takes up the sore subjects of productivity, foreign competition, and manufacturing job losses in the American economy since the 1990s. Its conclusion: “But it turns out that Trump’s story of U.S. manufacturing decline was much closer to being right, than the story of technological progress being spun in Washington, New York, and Cambridge.”

Virtually all academic and banking economists and business publications and sites—and, Quartz admits, that includes itself—have claimed that America has so many fewer productive jobs now, than 40 years ago, because of the advances of automation, increased productivity, and the benefits of free trade. Trump, of course, campaigned insisting that free trade robbed America of industrial jobs.

“Thanks to a painstaking analysis by a handful of economists,” says Quartz, “it’s become clear that the data that underpin the dominant narrative—or more precisely, the way most economists interpreted the data—were way off-base. Foreign competition, not automation, was behind the stunning loss in factory jobs. And that means America’s manufacturing sector is in far worse shape than the media, politicians, and even most academics realize.”

The United States lost manufacturing jobs faster between 2000 and 2015 than in the depths of the Great Depression; it lost about 6 million, or one-third, of all manufacturing jobs. The mainline economics explanation is higher productivity (driven by the IT/tech sector, from which industrial automation was supposedly coming).

The gist reported here is from a team of economists led by Dr. Susan Housman of Upjohn Institute. This team “discovered” that this apparent productivity increase was the product of extremely strong “quality adjustments” to the data, applied selectively by economists and government agencies to the tech/IT sector. Correct for those “quality data adjustments” made at economists’ desks rather than on shop floors, and there is very little productivity growth since 1990-95. The loss of jobs is due to foreign competition and trade.

Trump was right, “data” were wrong, is the conclusion.

Of course, this very “discovery” was made already by EIR’s Economics editors, and published, in 1984-85!

OTHER

Netanyahu Indictment Hearings Going Forward

April 10 (EIRNS)—While it appears that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will soon receive a mandate to form a new government following the April 9 Israeli elections, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit is moving ahead in his decision to hold pre-indictment hearings for charges of corruption in three corruption cases. On April 11 Mandelblit will meet with Netanyahu’s attorneys, who will receive the prosecutors’ case files so they can prepare their client’s defense, according to the Times of Israel. The hearings will be held within three months of Election Day.

Netanyahu can plead his case at the hearing before the indictment is filed. He denies all charges, calling it all “poppycock.” Under Israeli law, Netanyahu is not obligated to resign until he is convicted. If he is indicted, Knesset members could vote to grant immunity to one of their number, if a majority of lawmakers are convinced the defendant has been treated unfairly and the charges are discriminatory or were filed in bad faith.

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