THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2019

Volume 6, Number 106

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

• Trump ‘Infrastructure Deal’ Possible Now Only With LaRouche’s Policy, and With International Partners
• Mexico Offers U.S. Golden Chance To Join in Deelopment for Southern Mexico and Central America
• Mueller Speaks, Pulls Impeachment Stunt for British Empire Masters
• Continued Exposure of British Intelligence Role in Russiagate
• Mississippi Flooding Record Rivals 1927, as Emergency Raises Need for LaRouche Credit Plan
• Mexico Offers U.S. Golden Chance To Join in Development for Southern Mexico
• China’s Railway Rolling Stock Corp. Tests ‘Faster than Flying’ Maglev Prototype
• Recession Signs Are Multiplying
• U.S. State Department Strongly Protests Syrian Government’s Progress Against al-Qaeda
• Bad to Worse: Against Economic Warfare, China Mulls Like Warfare German Media Say ‘Voters Force Government into Climate Protection’

EDITORIAL

Trump ‘Infrastructure Deal’ Possible Now Only with LaRouche’s Policy, and with International Partners

May 29 (EIRNS)—The effect on House Democrats of “legal assassin” Robert Mueller’s effective call for impeachment today, signifies that no “deal” for infrastructure legislation will be made between Democratic leaders and President Donald Trump for the foreseeable future.

In reality, decisions to fund infrastructure investments result directly from decisions on what must be built, and how urgently—as Lyndon LaRouche often stated in his economic writings. LaRouche’s “Four Economic Laws” policy specified the urgency of building new, high-technology and high energy-flux density projects: high-speed rail and maglev transport systems, multi-function dam and water-management systems across river basins and aquifers, port and rail freight interfaces, third- and fourth-generation nuclear fission reactors, and a crash program to break through to fusion power. Space exploration, LaRouche says, will provide the overarching science driver through new “Apollo Projects” if the education and funding for them is mobilized.

Proceeding from these purposes, LaRouche insisted on Glass-Steagall bank reorganization at the start; no private banks would or could participate in such national rebuilding projects unless put under Glass-Steagall regulation. And the national credit institution to fund the process would base its credit issuance on the increased productive employment and productivity of the next generation, to repay the debt the nation would incur.

Currently, Members of the U.S. Congress show no awareness of such urgent purposes: In fact, they can watch the agricultural and industrial center of the country overrun by months of devastating floods, and not think of new Federal flood-control infrastructure! Consequently they think about “paying for” $2 trillion or other postulated infrastructure investments, solely in terms of unreal “talking points” distributed by party leaders.

A deal between Trump and the Democrats thus might have been worse than none. The Democrats’ “Party” legislation would be Rosa DeLauro’s relentlessly “green” National Infrastructure Bank Act. This is not only a far smaller authorization than $2 trillion; each infrastructure category is required to be judged on a) immediate job creation and b) contribution to mitigating climate change.

A far better step now offers itself to the President: a deal with Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on the Mexico/Central America Development Plan which he has now twice publicly asked the United States to join and support. This is a $30-40 billion development plan for cross-isthmus and North-South railroads and associated port development, combined with a new interconnected electricity grid across the region and agro-industrial development projects in southern Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Central America. Its purpose is to reduce migration and increase security, through development and reducing poverty.

President Trump has already tentatively committed some U.S. Federal credit, through the USAID development bank, to this development plan, as has Mexico, which is asking that he increase the commitment. This is the kind of purpose for which such credit should and does flow. China is doing this all across Eurasia and Africa, and in South America, through its Belt and Road Initiative. Such a step with Mexico could lead in the direction of cooperation in projects between the world’s two most important nations.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Mexico Offers U.S. Golden Chance To Join in Development for Southern Mexico and Central America

May 29 (EIRNS)—In a May 23 meeting in Washington, first with the State Department and then at the White House, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard laid out the details of the comprehensive development plan for southern Mexico and the three Northern Triangle nations of Central America—Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. He met with Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan and then with presidential advisor Jared Kushner and acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan.

A more detailed report of this program was presented in Mexico City on May 20. Having been discussed intensively with the Trump Administration since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s election last July, the program offers the United States a unique opportunity to participate in developing the region to its south through infrastructure building, poverty reduction and job creation to provide economic security to those nations and thus stem the tide of illegal migration north to the United States. Ebrard emphasized that Mexico is approaching this problem in the spirit of the cordial dialogue that Presidents Donald Trump and López Obrador began last July, in which they agreed to cooperate to resolve the migration problem. Such a program would also lend itself beautifully to cooperation with China through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Among the projects Ebrard mentioned were a plan for regional interconnection of the electricity grid, a network of gas pipelines—the Department of Energy has already contacted him—and rail lines, and setting up companies in the region. He pointed to a $5.8 billion commitment earlier this year by the U.S. government to Central America.

Last November, at López Obrador’s request, Ebrard had outlined a “Marshall Plan” for southern Mexico and the Northern Triangle, indicating it would require a $20 billion investment for Mexico and another $20 billion for Central America. In Washington last week, he said he hopes America will come through with the $5.8 billion committed to last December, adding he will ask for “much more,” without specifying an amount. Mexico, he said, has indicated its commitment to the program—$10 billion over a ten-year period—and the three Central American nations will shortly publicize what they are able to contribute.

But, Ebrard underscored, unless measures of this kind are implemented in the short term, with the necessary financial aid, “it will be impossible” to deal with the migration problem.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Mueller Speaks, Pulls Impeachment Stunt for British Empire Masters

May 29 (EIRNS)—With Attorney General William Barr traveling and Congress out of town, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller III took over the news cycle on May 29th by holding a press conference to dirty up the President with another series of cheap shots, slinking off the public stage without taking further questions. As LaRouche PAC and EIRhave said over the past two years, this prosecutor of Lyndon LaRouche and Donald Trump is a snake, an amoral legal hitman for the Anglo-American intelligence apparatus which has largely infected our government since the end of World War II, and which Donald Trump has begun cleaning out.

With the countercoup beginning to unfold, the President has named the governments of the United Kingdom, Australia, and Ukraine, as appropriate objects of investigation together with the Obama White House and Obama’s intelligence chiefs; and has declassified the documents which the intelligence community considers their crown jewels, exposing them to criminal investigation and charges. Thus, the British and their American lackeys are desperate to get back to their “Russia! Russia! Russia!” war cry while continuing to undermine and smear the President and Attorney General Barr—who appear ready to completely expose their attempted coup, their attempt to take out an American President.

Mueller and his bosses are also, undoubtedly, wringing their hands at the widespread public recognition of former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney’s evidence that the alleged Russian hack of the DNC servers, allegedly resulting in WikiLeaks’ publications about the DNC and Hillary Clinton, never happened. This is, of course, the central claim of the Russiagate narrative and formed the bulk of Robert Mueller’s babbling today about the Russians launching a “concerted attack on our political system,” involving “multiple, systemic efforts to influence our election, which deserve the attention of every American”—citing the DNC hack and the WikiLeaks publications for these bogus propositions.

Otherwise, Mueller again attempted to fuel the Democrats’ impeachment drive with the declaration, “If we had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” The President’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, immediately called out this weasel statement, stating that prosecutors are charged with making binary decisions, to charge or not to charge, and there is no constitutional provision for investigations, using the tools of grand juries, indictments, and compulsory process, in order to turn materials over to Congress for action. Nor does the Constitution countenance prosecutors having to “exonerate” defendants, since defendants are presumed innocent.

Mueller also said that he could not bring obstruction charges against the President because of a Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion saying that a sitting President could not be indicted.

Mueller’s taking explicit refuge in the Office of Legal Counsel opinion puts him in a direct confrontation with Attorney General Barr. Barr told Congress that both he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein asked Mueller three times if the OLC opinion was the reason for Mueller declining to reach a decision on obstruction of justice charges, and Mueller denied that the OLC opinion was behind his decision.

Continued Exposure of British Intelligence Role in Russiagate

May 29 (EIRNS)—The issue of British intelligence’s role in Russiagate—if not as the instigator, as a major player—continues to come out publicly. LaRouche PAC and EIR put out the complete dirty details two years ago.

On Fox News’s Hannity Show last night, after stating that former British foreign intelligence MI6 operative and dirty dossier author Christopher Steele has said he won’t cooperate with Attorney General Bill Barr’s investigation on the origins of Russiagate—Hannity suggested Steele be extradited to the United States—guests zeroed in on the British intelligence role.

Author Gregg Jarrett noted that former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper “outsourced spying,” to which Hannity added, “what they can’t do legally here, they outsourced to our allies, the U.K., Australia and maybe Italy … and they had them break the law for them.” As to why so many “informants” ended up overseas, Jarrett explained it’s “because the CIA can’t spy on its citizens on American soil, but if they are lured overseas, they can get MI6, MI5 and GCHQ to do their dirty work for them against the Trump campaign.” Jarrett insisted that spying began as early as 2015, principally coordinated by John Brennan.

There is huge panic among the intelligence community and allies about the investigation by Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham. Former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Joseph diGenova stated on the WMAL “Mornings on the Mall” Washington, D.C., radio show yesterday that, “we are heading toward a gigantic, gigantic fight…. The intelligence community, which includes the FBI, is in full resistance to disclosing what they did during the presidential campaign.”

Mississippi Flooding Record Rivals 1927, as Emergency Raises Need for LaRouche Credit Plan

May 29 (EIRNS)—As of the end of May, the Mississippi River flooding will have reached record durations at many points, e.g. 147 days at Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Eight Mississippi Valley states have experienced the longest flooding since the Great Flood of 1927. But the ongoing rains and storms mean many more days of high water still ahead.

This year’s massive, lingering storm systems—comparable in the last century to 1927 and 1993—have also brought tornadoes, seen most recently in Ohio, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. These tornado disasters have been pounced on by the fake news media, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Green crowd as “proof” of global warming, and therefore the need to de-structure the nation. Curiously, the continuously worsening flooding itself, despite far worse impact, is getting no such national media attention!

In fact, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Weather Service have been able to track and forecast the current heavy rainfall period for months, and “the sky isn’t falling.” The flooding and disasters are from huge pressure and weather systems, which have happened before, on varying geographic scales.

President Donald Trump, en route home from Japan, posted his personal and FEMA messages of support to several Midwest governors, including those of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. A funding package for FEMA and other relief still is gummed up in Congress. The Senate bill, passed last week 85-8, awaits passage in the House, but yesterday’s end-run attempt at passage again failed.

What the massive Midwest disaster points up is the urgent need for emergency and long-term national credit, through the Hamiltonian economic system put forward by Lyndon LaRouche in his June 8, 2014 statement: “The Four New Laws To Save the U.S.A. Now! Not an Option: An Immediate Necessity.”

One marker of the volume of Midwest river run-off is that the two huge diversion channels on standby in Louisiana—very seldom used—will now both be in operation as of this weekend. On June 2 or thereabouts, the Army Corps of Engineers will open the Morganza Spillway, marking only the third time this has happened in 46 years. The structure was opened in 1954, and was used in the floods of 1973 for 56 days, and in 2011 for 55 days. The water will spill into the Atchafalaya Basin.

On May 10, Bonnet Carré Spillway was opened in Louisiana. Since its first operation in 1937, this is only the 14th time it has been used, and the second time since Feb. 27 this year—a record. The water is channeled into Lake Ponchartrain, and thence into the Gulf of Mexico. Both spillways divert water away from New Orleans, which nevertheless is still under threat from the huge run-off now underway.

Leaders from the many Missouri-Mississippi states have activated not only their own agencies, from the National Guard to social services, but have also appealed to many Federal agencies for help, including, besides FEMA, and the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These combined agriculture and manufacturing states, are suffering economic crisis from the multiple factors of prolonged low farm income, the last 15 months of China trade conflict, the general lack of infrastructure—including high-speed rail, nuclear power, and especially water management—and now the storms and flooding.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

China’s Railway Rolling Stock Corp. Tests ‘Faster than Flying’ Maglev Prototype

May 29 (EIRNS)—Global Construction Review on May 28 reported big news on magnetic-levitation rail from China. “Work has been completed in the Chinese city of Qingdao on the body of a prototype maglev train [five carriages] that can reach speeds of 600 kmh, the Xinhua news agency reported last week. The project is being carried out by China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC), the world’s largest supplier of rail equipment, which hopes to begin serial production of the unit some time in 2021,” Global Construction Review wrote.

The prototype is testing train technology and systems. “So far, it has achieved static levitation. Ding Sansan, CRRC’s deputy chief engineer and head of the maglev R&D team, said: ‘Take Beijing to Shanghai as an example. Counting preparation time for the journey, it takes about 4.5 hours by plane, about 5.5 hours by high-speed rail, but would only take about 3.5 hours by maglev.’ ”

“Faster than flying”—up to the threshold of international trips—was maglev’s original promise in the mind of its first inventor, American physicist James R. Powell. Should this prototype, constructed with new stronger and lighter metal composites, go into operation in two years, that promise would start to be fulfilled.

CRRC is also developing a new low-speed maglev, reports Global Construction Review, with a 160 kmh top speed, for short-distance and commuter travel.

Xinhua reported today that China’s first medium- and low-speed maglev commercial operation line has reached a total mileage of 2.735 million kilometers and carried approximately 9.1654 million passengers since its opening three years ago in Hunan province, connecting the 18.55 km between Changshanan Railway Station and Changsha Huanghua International Airport. It is designed to run at 100 kmh.

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Recession Signs Are Multiplying

May 29 (EIRNS)—U.S. Treasury rates are now exhibiting a deeply inverted yield curve, with 3-month Treasuries paying higher interest than all longer-term securities except the 30-year bond. U.S. interest rates have fallen steeply since the U.S.-China trade negotiations foundered; U.S. home sales have scarcely increased despite much lower mortgage rates; industrial production has declined in both the United States and China, as well as in Europe; China has suffered a rare bank failure and an interbank liquidity shortage.

These are recession indicators, and a global recession threatens the waves of leveraged-loan defaults which can trigger a financial blowout.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

U.S. State Department Strongly Protests Syrian Government’s Progress against al-Qaeda

May 29 (EIRNS)—In its military campaign against al-Qaeda in Idlib, the Syrian Arab Army has captured Khan Sheikhoun, the site of the alleged April 4, 2017 “chemical weapons attack” which was used to goad President Donald Trump into his first cruise missile attack on Syria on April 7. The Syrian Army is bringing up reinforcements for its next advance, while Al Masdar News reports that Russia has moved a small number of its military police to northern Aleppo Province. “This move by the Russian military will ultimately block Turkey’s future operation in the area,” Al Masdar reports.

The U.S. State Department is denouncing Syria for a “reckless escalation”—against al-Qaeda terrorists. Since last year’s U.S. escalated threats of attacks on both Syrian and Russian military forces because of the planning of an Idlib operation, the Syrian Army has held off while al-Qaeda consolidated complete control of the province and mortared western Aleppo. On May 29, State spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus demanded, “The violence must end.”

OTHER

Bad to Worse: Against Economic Warfare, China Mulls Like Warfare

May 29 (EIRNS)—The U.S.-China trade confrontation, which began with punitive American tariffs facilely called “American system” measures, has degenerated through attempts to force basic changes in a successful economy, to clear economic warfare in the case of Huawei. Now it appears China’s leadership is itself considering a measure of economic war.

The confrontation is going from bad to worse even as the U.S. National Governors’ Association has just completed friendly and successful meetings in Kentucky with Chinese officials and large numbers of Chinese business persons and entrepreneurs, discussing mutual economic growth.

The official Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily warned in an editorial today that China could cut off rare earth metals as a countermeasure in the escalated trade battle, according to Reuters.  “We advise the U.S. side not to underestimate the Chinese side’s ability to safeguard its development rights and interests. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!” it wrote under the headline, “United States, Don’t Underestimate China’s Ability To Strike Back.”

“Will rare earths become a counter weapon for China to hit back against the pressure the United States has put on for no reason at all? The answer is no mystery,” Reuters quoted the daily as writing.

This threat, now discussed daily in China’s official and financial media throughout the United States and Europe, originally appeared in a May 15 Global Times commentary by Jin Canrong of Renmin University, an “expert on America.” He proposed China had three weapons: to cut off rare earths export; to dump U.S. Treasury holdings; and to block Chinese markets to specific U.S. products. Today Global Times carries its own editorial “U.S. Will Rue Forcing China’s Hand on Rare Earths.”

The reasoning is that smart phones, electric vehicles and advanced precision weapons need the rare earths. Thus, as a Global Timeseditorial put it, China’s (rare earths) products are being used directly against it.

These are metals, called lanthanides, of which there are 17 in the periodic table of elements. The IT sector depends upon them. China is supposed to have about 90% of proven reserves of rare earths, but that may be an assumption from their current share of world production, about 80%. But it also has the lion’s share of rare earths consumption. Production in Canada, Russia, Brazil, and particularly Australia has been rising with prices since 2010, and it could surge higher quickly if Chinese exports were stopped. Even the United States could resume this production, in which it was until 1980—at a much lower level—the world leader.

German Media Say ‘Voters Force Government into Climate Protection’

May 29 (EIRNS)—This is the headline of an article in Süddeutsche Zeitung, written on the eve of today’s special session of the government’s “climate cabinet.” Chaired by the Chancellor, the ministers of transport, environment, agriculture, finance, economics will convene to discuss an acceleration of decarbonization policies. The transport and agriculture sectors have been singled out as the ones to be transformed to drastically reduce emissions. The article propagandizes that the May 23-26 European Parliament elections, in which Germany’s “ruling” Christian Democrats and Social Democrats suffered huge losses in favor of the Green Party, now the second largest in Germany, is a wakeup call for the government to finally take so-called “climate protection” seriously and do something.

That “doing something” means horrendous cuts in the population’s living standards, amid Malthusian appeals to austerity in favor of “protecting” the climate, and bolstered by piteous pleas of the likes of Greta Thunberg, who otherwise know absolutely nothing about science, about climate.

Particular blackmail against the government is being orchestrated with reference to the fact that in 9 of Germany’s 10 biggest cities, the Greens took the lead in the European election:  Cologne 32.9%; Frankfurt 31.3%; Hamburg and Munich 31.2 each%; Duesseldorf 29.2%; Stuttgart 28.4%; Berlin 27.8%; Dortmund 25.0%; Leipzig 20.2%. In Berlin, the Greens got almost as much as CDU (15.2%) and SPD (14.0%) combined. Generally, 30% of the urban youth votes, and more than 40% of the vote of first-time urban electorate went to the Greens.

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