MONDAY, MAY 13, 2019

Volume 6, Number 93

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

Secretary Mike Pompeo and China’s Wang Yi To Make Parallel Visits to Russia

Nuclear Envoys of U.S. and South Korea Met in Seoul

EU Commission Responds to Former Greek Ambassador Chrysanthopoulos, Thanks to Movisol

Italy’s Five Stars Goes with ‘Clean Hands’ Campaign, at Least for European Election Campaign

Former Sri Lanka Army Commander Warns of New Attacks

In Africa, the Belt and Road Is Spurring General Socio-Economic Development

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EDITORIAL

Trump Is Deploying Pompeo To Establish Constructive Relations With Russia

May 12 (EIRNS)—While one may wonder why President Donald Trump would send Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as his emissary to meet with Sergey Lavrov and Vladimir Putin this coming week, given Pompeo’s regular rants against Russia as a threat to the United States and “our democratic way of life,” it is apparent that Trump trusts him to represent the President—not himself—in these crucial meetings. A State Department press briefing “on background” (i.e., the name of the briefer was to remain unreported), on Pompeo’s upcoming visit to Moscow and Sochi, explicitly asserted that “part of our Russian policy is: It is in our interest to have a better relationship with Russia.” The briefer quoted President Trump: “A productive dialogue is not only good for the United States and good for Russia, but it is good for the world…. If we are going to solve many of the problems facing our world, then we are going to have to find ways to cooperate in pursuit of shared interests.”

Indeed, Russia, and Putin in particular, is proving to be absolutely essential in resolving the multiple hot spots around the world—Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Afghanistan—any one of which could explode into full-scale war and threaten a global conflict. Pompeo, Bolton, and VP Pence are stoking the flames of such conflicts, knowing full well that they are essentially “surrogate” wars against Russia and China, while also aimed directly at President Trump himself—to undermine Trump’s policy intention that the U.S. should be friends with Russia and China.

Trump deployed Special Representative on North Korea Stephen Biegun to Moscow; he deployed Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad to Moscow; he spoke for 90 minutes with Putin by phone, discussing all these crisis situations; and now he is deploying Secretary Pompeo to Sochi to meet with both Foreign Minister Lavrov and President Putin. Trump and Putin will both be attending the G20 meeting in Osaka on June 28-29. A summit there, or even earlier, is a possibility, and an urgent necessity.

The trade talks with China did not conclude with an agreement, and Trump, as is his custom, upped the pressure with increased tariffs on Chinese goods—which China will counter with their own tariffs or similar measures. But both Trump and Chinese trade negotiator Liu He are insistent that progress was made and that the talks will continue. Trump has welcomed a summit with Xi Jinping as soon as the trade deal can be reached.

In the U.S., the escalation of a counter-attack against those responsible for acting on behalf of British intelligence to bring down the government of the United States, an act of treason, is escalating. Most importantly, Roger Stone, a close friend of Donald Trump for 40 years, and a public sponsor of the Schiller Institute and the work of Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, has broken the deadlock on the ultimate lie contained in the Mueller report, and the basis of the fraudulent Russiagate investigation itself: Stone issued a motion in the court hearing Mueller’s criminal case against him, which motion exposes the fact that the presumed Russian hack of the Democratic Party’s computers never happened, using the proof by William Binney that there was no hack at all, but a download, probably by a disgruntled Sanders supporter furious that the DNC was illegally undermining Sanders’ candidacy in favor of Hillary Clinton.

The evidence provided by the LaRouche PAC from day one of the fraudulent Russiagate hoax is now before the Congress, before the Courts, and increasingly before the citizens of the United States and the world. The exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche by President Trump—the current battle cry of the Schiller Institute and LaRouche PAC—would massively expand this exposure of the British Empire’s continuing campaign to assert their imperial power over their former colony. But even more important, it would free the minds of the American people to reflect on the powerful and beautiful ideas of Lyndon LaRouche, which have been denied them over these past fifty years through the repression of him and his ideas by the British and the British assets within the United States.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Roger Stone Court Filing Challenges Russiagate Premise, Seeks To Prove Russians Did Not Hack DNC

May 11 (EIRNS)—In a court filing on Friday, May 10, Roger Stone, the long-time friend of Donald Trump targeted by Robert Mueller, and subsequently charged for lying, obstruction, and witness tampering in the Russiagate House Intelligence Committee investigation, has challenged the central premise of Russiagate, that the Russians hacked the DNC and thus “interfered” in the 2016 Presidential election to Donald Trump’s advantage.

In a Motion To Suppress documents and evidence gathered as a result of search warrants issued in his and other cases, Stone has attached expert Declarations from former NSA Technical Director William E. Binney and widely recognized private cybersecurity expert Peter Clay, challenging Russiagate’s foundation: that the Russian state hacked the computers of the DNC, John Podesta, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and transferred the data to WikiLeaks for publication. Stone’s suppression motion states that this, in all probability, never happened.

If Stone is successful, it will represent the first time the false narrative of the Russian hack of the 2016 election will be subject to actual adversarial testing, and, most believe, the theory will be substantively disproved by being subjected to sunlight.

President Trump Suggests Iran Should Give Him a Call, Says ‘I Temper Bolton’

May 10 (EIRNS)—Speaking with reporters at the White House on May 10, President Donald Trump was asked if he was satisfied with the advice he has received from his National Security Advisor John Bolton. Talk, after all, has made it into print that Bolton could be fired, especially after the Venezuela “coup” fiasco which Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Vice President Mike Pence masterminded.

The President stood by Bolton, but with a qualification. “John has strong views on things, but that’s okay. I actually temper John, which is pretty amazing isn’t it? … I’m the one that tempers him, but that’s okay. I have different sides. I mean, I have John Bolton, and I have other people that are a little more dovish than him. And, ultimately, I make the decision. No, I like John. I get very good advice from John.”

Trump was also asked if there is a risk of military confrontation with Iran. “I guess you could say that always. … But hopefully that won’t happen. What I’d like to see with Iran, I’d like to see them call me,” he answered.

Then followed his much-reported remark, that John Kerry could be prosecuted for violating the Logan Act for advising Iran, adding, however, that that’s the “kind of stuff” that Democrats do, and his people don’t want to do that.

His beef with Obama’s former Secretary of State, he said, is that Kerry is telling the Iranians “not to call,” when Trump’s cancellation of the Iran deal should have brought them to the negotiating table. He cited how the resulting sanctions had driven Iran’s economy “into a mess,” sent inflation soaring, and led to “riots every weekend and during the week.”

Trump continued: “What they should be doing is calling me up, sitting down; we can make a deal, a fair deal. We just don’t want them to have nuclear weapons. Not too much to ask. And we would help put them back into great shape…. I look forward to the day where we can actually help Iran.  We’re not looking to hurt Iran. I want them to be strong and great and have a great economy….

“They should call, and if they do, we’re open to talk to them. We have no secrets.  And they can be very, very strong, financially. They have great potential. Very much like North Korea. North Korea has tremendous potential, economically. And I don’t think [Kim’s] going to blow that. I don’t think so.”

Britain’s Opium War against U.S. Scores, as Denver Decriminalizes ‘Magic Mushroom’ Hallucinogens

May 10 (EIRNS)—Denver, Colorado voters passed an ordinance on May 7 which orders the city’s police to remain hands-off on people using, possessing, or growing so-called “magic mushrooms.” These hallucinogens are illegal in the United States, classed by federal law in the same category as heroin and LSD because of their mind-destroying hallucinogenic effect.

The Denver vote was a close one, but the drug-pushers behind the measure are ecstatic over the precedent. Campaigns for similar hallucinogenic ballot measures are already underway in the states of Oregon and California. Backers plan to use the Denver vote to open the floodgates for national legalization of hallucinogens, in the same way that marijuana legalization has been deliberately orchestrated, from “decrim,” to spreading state-by-state legalization, first of “medicinal,” then “recreational” use, to the now looming threat of national cannabis legalization.

This vote is not a spontaneous expression of “democracy,” but the result of a decades-long British imperial assault which American statesman Lyndon LaRouche warned against from the moment the “rock-sex-drug” counterculture was deliberately introduced from London in the 1960s. He warned from the outset that the result of this destruction of the human mind would lead to the fascism of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” if not overturned.

Dope, Inc. is at the center of the current developments. Britain’s Beckley Foundation immediately hailed the “world-first” Denver vote as “an indicator of the degree to which societal attitudes towards psychedelics are shifting,” internationally. Beckley has played a “pioneering” role in producing the “research studies” used to promote hallucinogens’ use as “medicinal,” since its founding in 1998 by Amanda Feilding, aka Lady Neidpath, wife of the 13th Earl of Wemyss and March, James Charteris, Lord Neidpath. A close friend of LSD inventor Albert Hofmann, Lady Neidpath turned Beckley into a central player in global drug legalization generally, and its stated purpose is to promote the mass use of psychoactive drugs for “expanding consciousness” and “altered states.”

Beckley began holding its annual Global Drug Policy Seminars in the House of Lords in 2003, bringing together top government officials (e.g., the head of the Drug Strategy Directorate, Home Office), diplomats, and prominent lords and ladies. A 2003 meeting at the Royal Society was co-sponsored by the U.K. Cabinet Office Strategy Unit; and in 2005, the U.K. government’s “Foresight” program co-sponsored a “Brain Science, Addiction and Drugs Project” with the Beckley Foundation, and assigned the foundation the task of developing “a long-term, sustainable policy on the management of recreational drugs.” And yes, Beckley organized conferences on “Drugs and Society” at Queen Elizabeth II’s Windsor Castle.

On May 7, Neidpath’s Scientific Assistant, Dr. Sam Gandy, an ecologist and collaborator with the Psychedelic Research Group at Imperial College London, gave a presentation in London, in which he pushed for greater psychedelic use to “save us from ecological disaster.” Psychedelic use, you see, “has been found to result in enduring long-term increases in one’s connection to nature,” and “the degree of nature connection has also been found to strongly predict pro-environmental behaviors and attitudes.”

Construction of Transcontinental Railroad 150 Years Ago, A Shining Example of U.S.-China Cooperation

May 11 (EIRNS)—Yesterday was the first of several days of celebration to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad. At a ceremony held at the Golden Spike National Historical Park at Promontory Summit, about 100 km northwest of Salt Lake City, thousands of people came out to participate, and to also honor the crucial role of Chinese workers in building the project which transformed the United States. At the site, the last spike of the transcontinental railroad was ceremonially driven in here by Central Pacific Railroad President Leland Stanford on May 10, 1869.

In a statement issued on the occasion of this anniversary, President Donald Trump stated that “our Nation celebrates the thousands of workers who diligently laid track for six years across desolate plains and treacherous mountains. We honor the undaunted efforts of the people who made this innovation possible, including workers of Irish and Chinese descent, as well as freed slaves, Native Americans, Civil War veterans, and Latter-Day Saints. Roughly 12,000 workers of Chinese ancestry worked to dig out a particularly challenging section.  Through blizzards and other treacherous weather, they blasted and chiseled 15 tunnels through the hard granite of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

“We also honor our former leaders who had the vision and understanding that a robust infrastructure supports a vibrant economy. In the years that followed, this tremendous engineering feat helped revolutionize interstate travel and commerce. The completion of the transcontinental railroad catalyzed our country’s development, empowered greater settlement of the American West, and expanded prosperity from the Atlantic to the Pacific. On this sesquicentennial celebration, we recognize the American ingenuity and the hard work and grit of all the workers that made the construction of this railroad and the unification of our Nation possible.”

China’s daily Global Times reported that in a video message recorded for the event, Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai described the railroad as “a project of wonder of the world that linked America from sea to shining sea and laid the foundation for the American economic boom.” The project was also an excellent example of how the Chinese and American people can come together to get things done, he said, “and make the impossible possible. A strong bond between China and the United States can deliver real benefits to our two countries and to the world community,” Cui said.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

More Sanctions Slapped on Venezuela, as Cuba Feels Effects of Aid Cutoff

May 11 (EIRNS)—In his daily bellowing routine, National Security Advisor John Bolton yesterday ranted in tweets against “malign actors Russia, Cuba and Iran”—how Iran figures in this situation hasn’t been explained—“for enabling repression” of the Venezuelan people. The U.S. is putting those nations “on notice,” he raved.

As part of the policy of strangling Venezuela—and Cuba—the Treasury Department announced yesterday it had imposed sanctions on two companies, the Monsoon Navigation Corporation and the Serenity Maritime Ltd., and their oil tankers, for transporting oil from Venezuela to Cuba. The sanctions block the firms and ships from having any dealings with U.S. persons or companies and freeze any assets they might possess in the U.S.

In announcing the sanctions yesterday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin indicated that Venezuela’s defense and security sector will also be subject to sanctions going forward, The Hill reported. This comes in response to the May 9 arrest by Venezuela’s intelligence service, SEBIN, of top opposition figure Edgar Zambrano. Mnuchin warned that Treasury’s action “puts Venezuela’s military and intelligence services, as well as those who support them, on notice that their continued backing of the illegitimate Maduro regime will be met with serious consequences. The U.S. will take further action if Cuba continues to receive Venezuelan oil in exchange for military support.”

Cuba is the major recipient of foreign aid from Venezuela, largely in the form of subsidized oil. Britain’s Guardian reports today that as a result of the cutoff of oil and other aid, the Cuban government has announced it is initiating rationing on chicken, eggs, rice, beans, soap and other staples, given its grave economic crisis. Commerce Minister Betty Diaz Velazquez said the measure is necessary due to shortages of food staples, as a result of the Trump administration’s intensifying economic embargo. Shipments of subsidized oil to Cuba from Venezuela have been reduced by two-thirds. It’s becoming common to see long lines of Cubans outside of markets waiting to purchase scarce staples, at times when they become available. Cuba imports 60-70% of its food.

ECONOMY

Her Majesty’s Chatham House/RIIA Pushing Fake Meat To Grind Up Human-Serving Farming

May 10 (EIRNS)—Laura Wellesley from the Royal Institute for International Affairs, RIIA/Chatham House, wrote an article for BBC on May 10, “The Vegetarian ‘Meat’ Aimed At Replacing the Real Thing.” Wellesley writes: “Concerns about the environmental and health impact of our diets has seen interest in vegetarian and vegan foods grow. Vegetarian ‘meat’ designed to mimic the look, smell and taste of the real thing are already available, while scientists are developing lab-grown meats.”

The first type of new “meat” is plant-based products, already in supermarkets. A U.S. firm, Impossible Foods, has developed a plant version of heme—which gives beef its color and taste. The second type of meat alternative is known as cultured or “clean meat,” which is produced using animal stem cells. Last week, the value of the U.S. fake food firm “Beyond Beef” rose nearly $3.8 billion, 163%, after its Wall Street debut.

EU Commission Orders Italy To Increase Taxes and Slash the Budget

May 11 (EIRNS)—The outgoing EU Commission published its spring economic forecast on May 7. The report, drafted by French Socialist and former Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, says that Italy will have a lower growth than planned and a higher debt and budget deficit. As a remedy, the Commission recommends to cut the budget and increase the value-added tax: “The possible activation of the safeguard clause for increasing VAT in 2020 and a potentially lower spending for new measures would outline a better fiscal scenario.”

Thus, the Commission recommends as medicine more of what made the patient sick in the first place. Italy is in a chronic depression because it was forced to adopt a no-growth policy under the Stability Pact, which forbids it to reduce unemployment to less than 10%, in order to “fight inflation.”

Vice Premier Liu He Says Trade Talks Not Ended, but China Won’t Cave In on Matters of Principle

May 11 (EIRNS)—In comments yesterday to Chinese media, following the end of talks with the U.S. trade delegation, Vice Premier Liu stated firmly that trade negotiations between the two nations have not broken down, and that both sides have agreed to hold more talks in Beijing. “Negotiations have not broken down,” he was reported as saying by CCTV. “Quite the opposite. I think that small setbacks are normal and inevitable during the negotiations of both countries. Looking forward, we are still cautiously optimistic.”

xHe stated however that, as a nation, China does have to respond to the announced hike in U.S. tariffs, and that there are still significant differences, Reuters reported. These are “matters of principle,” he stressed, and China cannot make concessions on matters of principle. Although China had indicated it would respond to the new U.S. tariffs, it has yet to do so.

According to China Daily, Liu said that differences center first on the issue of tariffs. “If both sides want to reach an agreement, then all additional tariffs must be eliminated,” he said. In addition, Bloomberg reports, targets must be set for Chinese purchase of goods in line with real demand, as well as ensure that the text of any agreement is “balanced” to preserve the dignity of both nations.

Liu underscored that both sides have agreed to keep talking, despite “some temporary resistance and distractions.” For the interest of “the people of China, the people of U.S. and the people of the whole world, we will deal with this rationally,” although he indicated that “China is not afraid, nor are the Chinese people.” China, he said, “needs a cooperative agreement with equality and dignity.”

Who Needs Steel, If There Are No Projects To Build?

May 11 (EIRNS)—The failed merger attempt between Thyssen-Krupp and Tata, which as a key component was intended to separate the steel division from the German company and focus on other “industrial” products such as elevators, is driving the German company into a more precarious situation than if the merger, designed by Goldman Sachs as a financial consultant, had succeeded.

Management does speak of a future for steel but that would be a future without 6,000 of the 27,000 jobs in that division. A future for steel—and where should it come from, if there are no bigger projects in construction of industrial facilities and infrastructure development visible? The German Navy is lagging years behind with the realization of its announced new vessel projects. Nor does the auto industry, the centerpiece of German industry today, offer any options in its broadening crisis.

As rumored, the various hedge funds that have been betting on the failure of the merger and are expecting options to carve Thyssen-Krupp up into pieces, some of which could make a profit, see their big chance now. The only chance to secure the steel jobs at Thyssen-Krupp is to have a negotiated framework agreement between the governments of Germany, China and other countries along the New Silk Road to cooperate on grand projects.

German Machine Builders Face Profound Crisis

May 11 (EIRNS)—The VDMA, the Germany Mechanical Engineering Industry Association, which builds machines, reports a drop in new orders in the range of 10% for the first quarter of 2019 as compared to the same quarter last year.

March of this year shows the same average 10%, but this differentiates into a ˗3% in the Eurozone, ˗9% in all foreign orders, but a whopping ˗15% in domestic orders! Against this background, the statement by Ralph Wiechers, chief economist of the VDMA that “the export-driven German industry cannot decouple from the global uncertainty,” does not make much sense. But it reflects that there is no idea about revitalizing the domestic conjuncture, and no idea about the global situation either.

China’s High-Speed Rail Sets World Record 10 Billion Passengers

May 12 (EIRNS)—Global Times today reports that “China’s high-speed railway had transported more than 10 billion passengers by the end of the first quarter of 2019, a new world record,” as reported by China Railway.

China had almost 30,000 kilometers of high-speed railway track in 2018, twice as long as the rest of the world’s railways combined, the China Railway statement said. There were more than 2 billion high-speed trips in 2018, an annual increase of nearly 17%, or over three-fifths of all rail passengers.

China’s volume of railway passenger transport, freight volume, transport density and other major transport economic indicators consistently ranks first in the world, China Railway said.

The newer Chinese bullet trains, called Fuxing, which went into operation in 2017, have carried nearly 200 million passengers with an average passenger load of 75%, some 1.3% higher than other high-speed trains, according to China Railway. China will see 850 Fuxing high-speed trains put into service by the end of this year.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Pompeo Meeting with Lavrov, Putin in Sochi To Emphasize Closer Collaboration Looking to Future

May 11 (EIRNS)—Speaking in a very measured tone, free of accusations or recriminations, a senior State Department official briefed reporters yesterday on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s May 13-14 visit to Russia. Pompeo will be in Moscow on May 13, where he’ll meet with American businessmen and diplomatic personnel, and then the next day will travel to Sochi where he will meet with both Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin. A question that arose in discussion is whether these meetings might lay the groundwork for a possible Trump-Putin summit in late June at the G20 meeting in Osaka.

The official wouldn’t comment on the likelihood of a future summit between Presidents Trump and Putin, but emphasized that “We’ve been clear all along that part of our Russia policy is it is in our interest to have a better relationship with Russia.” The May 14 meeting is “an opportunity to take the conversation to a higher level and to have that frank and direct conversation on this full range of issues on the relationship,” he said, going on to quote Trump that “a productive dialogue is not only good for the United States and good for Russia, [but] it’s good for the world…. If we’re going to solve many of the problems facing our world, then we are going to have to find ways to cooperate in pursuit of shared interests.”

Among the topics to be discussed are Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran, Syria and North Korea. Arms control will also be high on the agenda. According to the State Department official, Trump has made clear he wants arms control agreements that “reflect modern reality,” and these “must include a broader range of countries and account for a broader range of weapons systems than our current bilateral treaties with Russia.”

While making the obligatory references to Russia’s alleged “destabilizing” activities in Europe and meddling in U.S. elections, the official emphasized several areas in which Russia and the U.S. are collaborating, including Special Envoy for North Korea Stephen Biegun’s and National Security Council official Fiona Hill’s recent trips to Moscow to discuss “our shared goal” of achieving denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, as well as that of Special Envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad’s meetings with his Russian and Chinese counterparts. Russia’s and China’s cooperation on these issues are greatly appreciated, the State Department official said.

Brexit Party’s Farage Helps Expose BBC in Pre-Election Interview

May 12 (EIRNS)—The leading interview program in the U.K., Andrew Marr on BBC, today hosted Nigel Farage, the founder of the new Brexit Party, who is polling ahead of the Tories and Labour combined for the European Parliament elections on Thursday, May 23. As Marr is wont to do, he came prepared with a list of “gotcha” questions, aiming at painting Farage with the “right-wing wacko” label in the eyes of the liberal establishment. Farage turned the tables on BBC.

Marr started with “do you still beat your wife?”-style questions: “Do you still believe that worrying about global warming is the stupidest thing in human history?” “Do you still feel that people with HIV shouldn’t be allowed into the United Kingdom?” And similar questions on gun control and support for Putin.

Farage at first tried to answer a possible real question which lay behind the fake question. On climate change he said: “I believe that if we decide in this country to tax ourselves to the hilt, to put hundreds of thousands of people out of work in manufacturing industries, given that we produce less than 2% of global CO2, that isn’t terribly intelligent.”

But rather than playing the game, he also launched into an attack on BBC as fake news, which would make Donald Trump proud: “Here we are with one of the biggest changes in politics that has ever occurred and you don’t want to talk about it. What is wrong with the BBC?”

When Marr simply continued reading from his fake news list of questions, Farage responded: “This is absolutely ludicrous. I have never in my life seen a more ridiculous interview than this. You are not prepared to talk about what is going on in this country today. You’re in denial. The BBC’s in denial. The Tory Party’s in denial. The Labour Party’s in denial. I think you’re in for a bigger surprise on Thursday week than you can even imagine.”

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