WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 2019

Volume 6, Number 75

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

EDITORIAL

From the Ashes of Notre Dame de Paris

April 16 (EIRNS)—Yesterday the world witnessed, dumbstruck, the terrible fire which destroyed significant portions of the Notre Dame of Paris Cathedral, one of humanity’s great cultural treasures. The occasion unleashed an unformed sentiment of deep loss across the planet, a sense based on the universal character of Mankind which transcends all secondary differences of space and time.

Its import was best captured by Jacques Cheminade, former French presidential candidate and long-time friend and associate of the American statesman Lyndon LaRouche, who stated:

“I just learned about the fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. I want to express here the emotion that we all feel, friends and political allies; an emotion all the stronger because we just concluded our seminar at Autun, home to the Saint-Lazare Cathedral, the older sister of Notre Dame de Paris. Our cathedrals, centers of education for all, inspired the industrial and agricultural revolutions of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. Through them the connection between soul and matter which always brings about a superior good for humanity, becomes manifest.

“That in the 21st century, in France, in Paris, such an accident has been possible, overwhelms me. It is time to pull ourselves together in all areas of human activity, because we cannot remain inactive in those areas where humanity is at stake, and where human beings create objects so beautiful that they must be there forever, and for all of us sources of joy.”

The response to the loss of Notre Dame is nearly identical to the sentiment which rises up, albeit in a more positive form, with the breathtaking news last week of the proof of the existence of a black hole at the center of a galaxy 53.5 million light years away, and very possibly at the center of each of the 2 trillion galaxies currently known to exist. Equally breathtaking is the way the discovery was made, using eight telescopes spread around the globe, which together—only together—created a “telescope” with an aperture barely large enough to detect and image the process which Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity had assured us had to exist.

As Helga Zepp-LaRouche commented: “First of all, it’s a wonderful example that, in order to resolve such really fundamental questions of our universe, you need international cooperation, because this kind of imaging would never have been possible with one nation having a telescope all by itself; but they had to use eight, and even among them, they could not cover the entire spectrum, so what they did is to basically have algorithms, calculating the space in between them and therefore forming a hypothesis…. The dimension of these questions is so big that it demonstrates that if we, as the one humanity, on the little blue planet, want to get a better reading of what kind of universe we inhabit … it makes very clear that this international space cooperation is a foretaste of the kind of collaboration for the future of humanity.”

International cooperation, and not anti-Russian and anti-Chinese propaganda, is what is needed, Zepp-LaRouche stated.

“We have to take on this anti-China campaign very much from a sovereign standpoint, because the reality is that there could be no greater discrepancy between what China is actually doing, and the neocon-neoliberal attack on China. The argument that China is an ‘authoritarian’ model, comes from the same Frankfurt School/Hannah Arendt kind of perspective as the attacks on Lyndon LaRouche as an ‘authoritarian personality.’ It is important to understand that methodology.

“What is the reality about China? For 2,500 years they have had the Confucian ideal of a beautiful character as the aim of education in society. Xi Jinping is on the record saying that the aesthetical education of man is absolutely important, because the goal of it is a beautiful mind and a beautiful soul.

“That is in total contrast to the ‘everything-goes’ liberal philosophy of the British system—or the West in general, because you have the same on both sides of the Atlantic, albeit with different predicates: everything from the opioid epidemic to the violence in the schools to the effects of the addiction to digital devices, which leads to brain damage.

“The antidote against that, obviously, is it is more urgent than ever to foster the aesthetical education of Man. That means that you need great classical art and the confrontation with beauty in painting, literature, music, all kinds of forms of art. Because beauty belongs both to the senses but also to the realm of reason. The notion of beauty is derived in the classics from Reason, and not from the sense. But it also appeals to the senses, and therefore uplifts the person in a playful way, as Schiller describes in the Aesthetical Letters.

“There are Chinese scholars who have basically completely picked up on that in modern times.”

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Belt and Road Initiative Keeps Growing, Despite Major Threats from the British and Their Allies

April 16 (EIRNS)—China is now engaged in heavy organizing in the countdown to the April 26-27 Second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, which will bring together representatives of over 100 countries and 29 international organizations. Just how powerful a draw the BRI is to nations across the planet, was shown earlier this week when the tiny Caribbean nation of Jamaica announced that they had signed an MOU with China on the BRI—notwithstanding the withering pressure that Washington and London have brought to bear. A similar, if strategically weightier example of this process was Italy’s signing an MOU with visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping last month.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang yesterday discussed China’s approach to the upcoming Forum:

“While the BRI was proposed by China, it has grown into an international public good. The success of the first BRF [Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation] together with the bumper practical outcomes speaks volumes. The fact that more countries and international organizations are taking an active part in the second forum is further proof to its success.”

Asked about media accounts that India would not be sending a delegation—as they hadn’t to the First Belt and Road Forum—because they view the BRI’s China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as infringing on Indian sovereignty, Lu responded:

“I would like to reiterate that the BRI is an open and inclusive initiative for economic cooperation. It never concerns territorial disputes. In pursuing BRI cooperation, China and partner countries are committed to equality, openness and transparency, to business operations centered around enterprises and to market rules and international norms. For those with inaccurate judgment on the BRI based on misunderstandings due to lack of knowledge of the real situation, I would like to reassure them that China is sincerely and resolutely committed to the principle of consultation and cooperation for shared benefit, equality and mutual benefit. Since its initiation, the Belt and Road cooperation has been inclusive and open to all countries that are interested in joining and working for win-win cooperation. It excludes no one. If the relevant country would like to take some time to see, we can wait.”

Meanwhile, Xinhua interviewed Cambodia’s Information Minister Khieu Kanharith who said that “the BRI forum will also further promote cooperation between China and ASEAN and between China and Cambodia…. For Cambodia, with Chinese assistance, we can build mega-infrastructure projects, and those projects are crucial to boosting economic growth and making communication easier and faster…. Our first priority is to boost economic growth and to make everybody have a fair share of the economic growth. The BRI can help us through supporting infrastructure projects and human resources development.”

He continued: “China has assisted us on equal footing, meaning that although China is a big country and Cambodia is a small country, China always treats us equally. With Chinese support, Cambodia has gained confidence in ourselves and our people are proud and confident in rebuilding the country.”

AIIB President Urges U.S. To Join Belt and Road as ‘Platform for All To Work Together’

April 16 (EIRNS)—Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank President Jin Liqun told the April 12-14 Harvard China Forum that the “infrastructure bottlenecks are the sewage problems of development. I would say that that’s also a problem for the United States”—a statement Americans can agree with. He presented the Belt and Road Initiative as “a platform for all participating countries to work together, including on connectivity,” which he called a matter not only of regional development, but also of “world peace and prosperity.”

When a discussion arose on how China had gone from being a debtor nation dependent on foreign development assistance, to one of the largest contributors to the World Bank’s International Development Assistance facility today, Jin pointedly commented that how much money a country has is not the issue. “Accumulated wealth cannot buy you respect unless you help do good things for the rest of the world. So China has been trying to invest and help other countries through its own experience,” Jin stated.

Xi Jinping Feature in Party Theoretical Journal Stresses Role of Morality in Art and Culture

April 16 (EIRNS)—A much-awaited article by China’s President Xi Jinping entitled “A Country, or a Nation, Cannot Be Devoid of Soul” was published yesterday in Qiushi Journal the theoretical journal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Xi’s article is intended to mobilize the powers of the nation in this critical moment when the People’s Republic of China is celebrating its 70th anniversary and is looking toward the realization of its final rejuvenation from the long period of stagnation that resulted from its “century of humiliation” beginning with the Opium Wars and ending with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and the initiation of the policy of “reform and opening up” by Deng Xiaoping in 1978.

The article points to the fundamental role of the Communist Party of China in realizing that development. And Xi is calling on the artists and writers to create a new culture, to reflect the lives of the people, and to devote their art to the progress of the nation. “Effecting radical reforms and preserving creativity, a country, a nation cannot be devoid of a soul, and as a spiritual undertaking, culture, literature, philosophy and social science is of course a form of soul-creation which one cannot be without and which dispels confusion,” Xi writes.

The cultural workers should also strive to give the people great works, referring to the great accomplishments of Chinese thinkers like Confucius and Mencius, poets like Tao Yuanming, Du Fu and Li Bai, or Western giants like Plato and Shakespeare. “All that has value and meaning in literary and artistic creations, has to reflect reality, illuminate reality, all for the benefit of solving real problems or of providing an answer to real questions,” Xi writes. “I hope that they have a firm footing in Chinese reality, take root in Chinese soil, grasp the progress of contemporary China, and reveal and show the splendid life of the Chinese people today, and expound well on China’s spirit, China’s values and China’s strengths.”

Culture must also have the function of strengthening the power of virtue in the people. “They must understand the quality of virtue, seek to establish virtue. Cultural, literary and art workers in the new era must have faith, sentiment and responsibility, establish lofty ideals, pursuing and deepening the sentiments of the nation. In pursuing his artistic goals, his academic ideals and the future of the nation are intertwined with the destiny of the national groups and the happiness of the people.”

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

President Putin Celebrates Cosmonautics Day, Exhorts Youth To Reach ‘Ambitious Goals’

April 16 (EIRNS)—Every year on April 12, Russia and space enthusiasts around the world celebrate the world’s first manned space flight by Yuri Gagarin, on that date in 1961. This year, addressing the First in Space gala at the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin stressed the qualities it took to accomplish that first manned mission, that the Russian space program is once again on the road to new scientific and technological developments, and that making breakthroughs in the future requires educating the young people who represent the “continuity of generations” in Russian cosmonautics.

“The people behind our space triumphs set big, forward-looking goals worthy of a great country. They took risks, achieved technological breakthroughs, worked hard and set an example of self-sacrifice and true love for the Motherland. Thanks to their courage and bravery, scientific genius and inexhaustible faith in human capabilities, we were the first in space….

“We must keep up with the fierce and growing competition, focus on solving complex challenges, and align the education system, science, and industry to this end. Today, to be in the lead, to be leaders on Earth it is necessary to be leaders in space. Therefore, I am deeply convinced that space exploration is a major area for national development, a source of both unique personnel and our own technology and, importantly, in the most diverse areas…

“It is necessary to expand the exploration of distant space and flight programs, and not only automatic, unmanned flights but certainly those with human participation. It is necessary to reach new frontiers to attain these goals. I am primarily referring to the development of a next generation manned craft and a super heavy rocket, advanced engines and materials.

“I am convinced that scientists, engineers, designers and the aerospace industry as a whole are ready to respond to this challenge. To accomplish this, they have a powerful technological base, remarkable human potential and the ability to offer bold, unconventional solutions.

“This is borne out by the recent successful launch of a [Soyuz] spaceship that, having made two circles around the Earth, delivered a payload to the International Space Station in just 3 hours and 21 minutes. This is not just a world record but also a prelude to new opportunities to work in orbit.

“And, of course, our competitive advantages lie in the continuity of generations. I would like to emphasize again that we will provide all the necessary assistance and support to the development of Russian cosmonautics. I wish all those who are now working in the space industry and those who want to be a part of it, primarily young people who dream of the stars and long exploration flights, great success, and to be the first in any job, and by all means, to be the first in reaching the most ambitious goals.”

Chinese Scientists Prepare New Experiment for Measuring Gravitational Waves

April 16 (EIRNS)—Fresh off the successful collaboration with the Event Horizon Telescope, which revealed the first-ever image of a black hole, China is preparing for a new space-based detection system scheduled to be completed in 2035. Called Tianqin (tian meaning “heaven” and qin being a Chinese plucked string instrument), the new experiment will be a gravitation-wave observatory consisting of three spacecraft in Earth orbit.

The Tianqin project is being led by Prof. Luo Jun, the president of Sun Yat-sen University, and is based in the university’s Zhuhai campus. Construction on project-related infrastructure, which will include a research building, an ultra-quiet cave laboratory, and observation center, began in March 2016. “Once completed, Tianqin will become an important tool to search for and detect black holes of all sizes and wavelengths in the next two decades,” said Prof. Wu Qingwen of the School of Physics of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, who worked on the Event Horizon Telescope.

Professor Wu said that Tianqin has the potential for even greater discoveries than the recent LIGO detection of a gravitational wave generated by a black hole merger. “LIGO used interferometers on the ground with an arm length of 4 km. But with satellites, the arm length will increase to 170,000 km. So the space probes will be able to detect gravitational waves at much lower frequencies generated by the merging of massive or supermassive black holes…. It will also enable us to see the smaller black holes during the infancy of the universe, as well as understand the history of black hole growth and the evolution of galaxies,” he said.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

FBI Targets Some of America’s Best Chinese Friends

April 16 (EIRNS)—In the last year since FBI Director Christopher Wray declared that China represented “a whole-of-society threat” to the United States, the FBI has either cancelled or put on “administrative review,” the visas of “as many as 30 Chinese professors in the social sciences, heads of academic institutes, and experts who help explain government policies,” the New York Timesreported on April 14.

This latest in the FBI’s long history of criminal witchhunts, is cutting the U.S. off from some of its best friends in China. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) experts are reported to have been particularly targetted, with the head of the CASS Institute of American Studies Wu Baiyi one of those no longer allowed to enter the U.S.

The U.S. visa of Wang Wen, Executive Dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies in Beijing, was also cancelled. Wang proved himself a farsighted ally of good relations with the U.S. when his institute co-sponsored the publication of the Chinese translation of Executive Intelligence Review’s special report, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge,” and convened a seminar in Beijing to present it to Chinese thinkers, which was addressed by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche and EIR’s Washington, D.C. correspondent Bill Jones, along with Wang and eight leading Chinese scholars.

Now, Wang told the New York Times that he, along with other scholars, has been told he could apply for a single-entry visa each time, but he refuses to do so, because the application questions are excessively intrusive. “I don’t want to go to America in the coming years. It’s not my loss, it’s the American government’s loss. They have lost an influential friend.”

Susan Shirk, the chair of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California San Diego, likewise protested that the people banned “are among the most sophisticated in how the U.S. works and are some of the strongest advocates of good relations with the United States. We are alienating some of America’s best friends in China.”

LaRouche Enemy William Weld Throws Hat in GOP Presidential Primary Ring vs. Trump

April 16 (EIRNS)—Yes, Virginia, the universe is coherent. Who should announce as the first Republican candidate to challenge President Donald Trump for the Republican nomination for 2020, but Bill Weld. Weld was the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts who launched the case against Lyndon LaRouche in Boston in 1987, and then played a key role in the “Alexandria Railroad” in Eastern District of Virginia through his Assistant U.S. Attorney John Markham. Weld is also former Governor of Massachusetts, and comes from a long-standing Boston Brahmin banking and dirty money clan.

Weld, you see, feels the need to run because “our nation is suffering.” His April 15 video statement, posted on his campaign site, said: “Ours is a nation built on courage, resilience, and independence. In these times of great political strife, when both major parties are entrenched in their ‘win at all cost’ battles, the voices of the American people are being ignored and our nation is suffering.”

According to a Washington Post op-ed today, an Emerson Poll showed that in a New Hampshire primary, President Trump “would whip Weld 82-to-18 if the race were held today. To quote Rick Perry, ‘Oops.’ ”

Legalization Sends Workplace Pot Usage Soaring in U.S.

April 16 (EIRNS)—That’s the shocking, but not surprising finding released last week by Quest Diagnostics, the largest provider of diagnostic services in the United States.

Quest Science and Technology Senior Director Barry Sample released the results of a review of the 10 million workforce drug tests they performed in 2018, at the Drug and Alcohol Testing Industry Association annual conference on April 11. Quest’s data revealed that positive on-the-job drug results overall were 10% more than in 2017, reaching the highest level in 14 years in the U.S., Smart Approaches to Marijuana President Dr. Kevin Sabet reported. The rate of increase was highest in states where marijuana has been legalized: Oregon’s rate of positive workforce results was 63% higher than the year prior, Nevada’s rate was up by 55%, and Colorado’s by 47%.

If you believe that the percentage of positive tests (as opposed to the rate of increase) is still relatively low—the national average was 2.3% of the workforce tested positive in Quest’s large sample—consider the implications for your safety. Quest’s analysis of post-accident urine testing in the general U.S. workforce found a year-over-year increase of 9% between 2017 and 2018 (increasing from 7.7% of all post-accident tests being positive in 2017 to 8.4% in 2018). The increase over five years was 29%.

Post-accident positive test rates in the federally-mandated, “safety-sensitive” workforce—airplane pilots, nuclear power plant employees, etc.—rose from 3.1% in 2017 to 4.7% in 2018, an increase of more than 51% year-over-year, and an increase of almost 81% over 2014.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

British Agent Pillsbury Demands Restructuring U.S. Government To Face ‘China Threat’

April 16 (EIRNS)—The Hudson Institute’s anti-China firebrand Michael Pillsbury—who claims the recently deceased Pentagon utopian madman Andrew Marshall as his mentor—told Fox News’ Lou Dobbs on April 2 that he is getting very worried about China’s success with the Belt and Road, citing both Panama’s enthusiasm and Italy joining. On those grounds, this snake within the Trump Administration called for the U.S. government to be restructured around the need to confront China, as Harry S Truman—under Winston Churchill’s imperial direction—revamped U.S. institutions to fight the Cold War.

Pillsbury raved to Dobbs: “The Cold War began in 1947. Congress and the President created the CIA, the NSC, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a new law on how to manage the Cold War. We’ve done nothing like that on China. People know this is some kind of challenge, but the idea that China is about to collapse is just killing any effort on our part to resist them!”

Pillsbury, a trade advisor to President Donald Trump who was once praised by the President several months ago as an authority on China, lies that President Trump agrees with him. He told Dobbs twice that the President has warned that “China is closing in on us,” as he argued that “we’ve got to change our government structure. The President has got to get more people working for him who share his vision…. We have got to take it much more seriously that … we face them as the major challenge.”

That was his line on April 2. In two interviews published by theSouth China Morning Post on April 13 and 15, he adopted a more Delphic line, lying outright that he does not advocate a Cold War with China. His problem is, as Pillsbury admitted to this Hong Kong-based paper, the “chemistry” between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping could change expectations that confrontation will go up between the two systems, as he put it. President Trump “probably has closer relations with a Chinese leader than any other [U.S.] President. There is some kind of admiration Trump has for Xi … drawing a little bit of parallel,” he said, between the “patriotic” movements which each are leading: Trump’s Make America Great Again and Xi’s Chinese dream of national rejuvenation. Pillsbury here argued that the current “bad China” faced by the U.S. could be transformed into “a good China,” through the trade negotiations.

As for the Belt and Road, Pillsbury said that the U.S. was “very suspicious” about it, “but this is something for future negotiations.”

Russia Still Sees Potential for Strategic Cooperation, Even as NATO and U.S. Obstruct It

April 16 (EIRNS)—A top Russian official made clear yesterday that Russia is still open to dialogue with the U.S. and with NATO, that there’s plenty to talk about, but that the mentality of confrontation coming from NATO is the barrier to such discussions.

Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to Washington, told the April 15 annual meeting of the Arms Control Association that the potential for joint efforts for peace, security, disarmament, strengthening non-proliferation and arms control is far from being exhausted. “We can do so much more if we respect the national interests of each other. The primary goal for us is to build a security architecture, which would give tangible results of the principle of equal and indivisible security for every nation,” he said. He pointed out that Russian security depends on much more than the balance of strategic nuclear weapons, but also on what the U.S. does, including in missile defense, precision nuclear and non-nuclear weapons and on the growth of U.S. military infrastructure near Russia’s borders, but also on the fate of the international arms control system.

Antonov also stressed that, in the Russian view, Russia’s new strategic weapons don’t fall under the purview of New START but that Russia is willing to talk about them. Russia has made it clear it is ready to discuss this in the format of negotiations on strategic stability, he continued. However, it is the United States and not the Russian Federation that is not ready to resume these negotiations, the ambassador stressed.

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