WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2019 Volume 6, Number 101 EIR Daily Alert Service P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390

• Russiagate Hoax Collapsing, Now Bring U.S., Russia and China Together To Replace the British Empire Forever
• Trump Exits ‘Infrastructure Meeting’ With Pelosi and Schumer after Democrats Hold ‘Impeachment Meeting’
• Huawei Chairman Says U.S. Is Attacking It, Because NSA Can’t Use Firm’s Equipment for Spying
• State Department, at It Again-Charges Syria ‘May Be Renewing’ Chemical Weapons Use
• Postol Confirms Validity of OPCW Engineers Report on Douma ‘Chemical Attack’
• Jihadis Srage Large Offensive in Idlib, Attack Russia Hmeymim Base, Syrian Army
• Acting Defense Secretary Shanahan Asserts Pentagon Policy on Iran Is ‘Deterrence, Not War’
• Washington Ultimatum to Turkey To Give Up S-400 in Two Weeks oe Face Penalties
• Deadly Riots Provoked by Losing Candidate Prabowo in Indonesia
• Chinese Ambassador Tells Fox, Charges Against Huawei and Beijing Are ‘Groundless, Without Evidence’

EDITORIAL

Russiagate Hoax Collapsing. Now Bring U.S., Russia and China Together To Replace the British Empire Forever

May 22 (EIRNS)—The Russia hoax did not begin with the treasonous targetting of Donald Trump by the Obama intelligence team. It began in 2014, when that same team of corrupt intelligence officials, together with Obama’s State Department and their cohort George Soros, backed by the fake news press, implemented the British plot to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine, openly supporting the neo-Nazi gangs running a violent “color revolution” against the Kiev government. Disbursing $5 billion to anti-Russia NGOs, handing out cupcakes to swastika-bearing thugs on the Maidan, Obama’s representative Victoria Nuland and her pal Christopher Steele—the same MI6 agent who later concocted the phony dossier on Trump—ran a criminal, violent coup, blamed the Russians, and launched their drive for World War III.

Then candidate Donald Trump captured the sentiment of a U.S. population disgusted with economic decay, perpetual colonial warfare, the intentional drugging up of their friends and their children, and the culture of pessimism and ugliness. His promise to restore the American System resonated with a citizenry who had witnessed 50 years of organizing by the LaRouche movement, which both warned of the threat of depression and war under the British-dominated monetary and strategic policies of the Bushes and Obama, while also putting forth the necessary economic, strategic and cultural policies to achieve a new, productive and peaceful world order.

LaRouche alone warned of the evil of the green psychosis poisoning the historic American optimism. LaRouche alone identified the fact that “Dope, Incorporated” was run by the London and Wall Street banks, the same speculative banks which orchestrated and financed the endless wars demanded by the “military-industrial complex.” LaRouche alone campaigned for a Moon-Mars project, to realize mankind’s “extraterrestrial imperative.” LaRouche alone posed the necessity of ending the British Empire once and for all, with its geopolitical, bestial view of man—nothing less—and that this could only be achieved by the United States joining with Russia, China and India, at a minimum, to replace the bankrupt British monetary system with a new creditary system based on the Hamiltonian principles that had created the original American System. LaRouche alone proposed the “New Silk Road” to unite East and West following the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the means to end geopolitics forever and establish a new world order based on sovereign states dedicated to the common aims of mankind.

All of this is now within our grasp, and has been put forward, or at least hinted at, by President Trump. If it is to be achieved, the American people must face the fact that the persecution and prosecution of Lyndon LaRouche in the 1980s, by the same people who ran the failed coup against President Trump, prevented these policies from being implemented back then, before the disastrous degeneration of these past 30 years.

LaRouche’s exoneration by President Trump would place this truth before the world, and give the President the public and international support he requires to throw off the British straitjacket imposed by the corrupt Congress, the fake news media, the neoconservatives and the neoliberals. The time is short. The time is now. The potential for victory has never been greater.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Trump Exits ‘Infrastructure Meeting’ with Pelosi and Schumer, after Democrats Hold ‘Impeachment Meeting’

May 22 (EIRNS)—President Trump walked out of the scheduled second White House meeting on infrastructure with House and Senate Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer this morning. Pelosi had called a meeting of Democrats to discuss impeachment early this morning, before the White House meeting, and came out accusing Trump of a “cover-up,” although they did not decide to launch impeachment as of yet.

Trump was furious. He left the meeting after three minutes, telling the press in the Rose Garden that he had told them: “I want to do infrastructure, but I can’t do it under these circumstances,” with the Democrat-led committees continuing the witch hunt investigations.

Trump said that he had insisted from the beginning of this Congress that “we can do the investigation track, or the investment track—we can solve problems if the Democrats work with us. So get these phony investigation over with.”

He blasted Pelosi’s charge of a cover-up. “I don’t do cover-up,” he said. He said his administration had been the most transparent in history, that he could have instructed people in his administration not to testify before the Mueller witch hunt based on executive privilege, according to his lawyers, but decided, since he had done nothing wrong, he would let everyone speak totally freely. He reviewed some statistics: 2,500 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, 500 witnesses, his own lawyer testifying for 30 hours—and after two years, $35 million, with 19 mostly Hillary Clinton supporters and Trump haters on Mueller’s team, they found nothing, no collusion.

“The crime was committed on the other side,” Trump said. “This whole thing was a takedown attempt of the President of the United States.” Now the Democrats want to run the whole thing over again, he said, rather than get something done for the country.

Huawei Chairman Says U.S. Is Attacking It, Because NSA Can’t Use Firm’s Equipment for Spying

May 22 (EIRNS)—Guo Ping, the Deputy Chairman of the Board and Rotating Chairman of Huawei, spoke at the World Mobile Conference in Barcelona on Feb. 26, said in his keynote: “PRISM, PRISM, on the wall, who’s the most trustworthy of them all? It’s an important question to ask. And if you don’t understand this question, go ask Edward Snowden.”

EIR’s Dave Christie reports in an analysis of the Huawei case: “PRISM was a Patriot Act program that allowed the NSA to collect data from internet companies in the United States (and probably beyond with their relations with GCHQ, etc.), including Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc., when permitted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.” This is one of the systems which former NSA Technical Director William Binney, who designed many of the programs intended to be used to find terrorists, has exposed their use instead for mass surveillance of virtually the whole world.

Huawei’s website carries an op-ed Guo Ping first published inFinancial Times on Feb. 27, which reads in part:

“The Snowden leaks shone a light on how the NSA’s leaders were seeking to ‘collect it all’—every electronic communication sent, or phone call made, by everyone in the world, every day. Those documents also showed that the NSA maintains ‘corporate partnerships’ with particular U.S. technology and telecom companies that allow the agency to gain access to high-capacity international fiber-optic cables, switches, and/or routers throughout the world.

“Huawei operates in more than 170 countries and earns half of its revenue abroad, but its headquarters are in China. This significantly reduces the odds of a ‘corporate partnership.’ If the NSA wants to modify routers or switches in order to eavesdrop, a Chinese company will be unlikely to co-operate. This is one reason why the NSA hacked into Huawei’s servers. ‘Many of our targets communicate over Huawei-produced products,’ a 2010 NSA document states. ‘We want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products.’

“Clearly, the more Huawei gear is installed in the world’s telecommunications networks, the harder it becomes for the NSA to ‘collect it all.’ Huawei, in other words, hampers U.S. efforts to spy on whomever it wants. This is the first reason for the campaign against us.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

State Department, at It Again—Charges Syria ‘May Be Renewing’ Chemical Weapons Use

May 22 (EIRNS)—In a May 21 statement, State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus charged that “unfortunately, we continue to see signs that the Assad regime may be renewing its use of chemical weapons, including an alleged chlorine attack in northwest Syria on the morning of May 19.” Notice the wording, “may be,” as State admits that, “we are still gathering information on this incident, but we repeat our warning that if the Assad regime uses chemical weapons, the United States and our allies will respond quickly and appropriately.”

The statement demands, moreover, that Assad’s “attacks against the communities of northwest Syria must end. The United States reiterates its warning, first issued by President Trump in September 2018, that an attack against the Idlib de-escalation zone would be a reckless escalation that threatens to destabilize the region.”

As for chemical weapons, State defensively claims that Russia’s April 25 charges against the White Helmets and others—that have been proven to be terrorist assets—“are part of a continuing disinformation campaign by the Assad regime and Russia to create the false narrative that others are to blame for chemical weapons attacks that the Assad regime itself is conducting.” Referencing Nov. 24, 2018, when it claims that “the Assad regime and Russia attempted to fabricate a chemical weapons attack near Aleppo and blame it on opposition forces,” State goes on to claim that “at times, Russia and the Assad regime have made these false allegations as a pretext in advance of the Assad regime’s own barbaric chemical weapons attacks. The facts, however, are clear. The Assad regime itself has conducted almost all verified chemical weapons attacks that have taken place in Syria.”

Ignoring the report from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons engineers disputing that organization’s “official” findings of Syrian chemical weapons use, State insists that the OPCW’s Joint Investigation Mechanism has “repeatedly verified and reported the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons. The Assad regime’s culpability in horrific chemical weapons attacks is undeniable.”

Added to this piece of sophistry is the letter written to President Donald Trump May 20 by a bipartisan and bicameral group of 400 U.S. legislators, demanding that the U.S. not withdraw from Syria, in order to defend it from “growing threats to U.S. interests, [and defend] Israel and regional security.” The “threats” are identified not only as terrorist groups, but also Russia and Iran.

Postol Confirms Validity of OPCW Engineers Report on Douma ‘Chemical Attack’

May 22 (EIRNS)—Ted Postol, a professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has reviewed the documents prepared by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) engineering team on the faked April 7, 2018 Douma chemical weapons attack, blamed by the British White Helmets on the Syrian government and used to justify U.S., French, and British air strikes on Syrian government sites a week later. The report was suppressed by the OPCW and replaced with obscure reports claiming to confirm the fake charges, even though the engineering team had conducted the only independent, on-the-scene investigation of the charges. The team leaked their report to the British-based Syria Study Group last week. Postol provided his report to the Institute for Public Accuracy on May 21.

Postol reports on the team’s findings, and writes: “I will have a much more detailed summary of the engineering report later this week. For now, it suffices to say that the UN OPCW engineering report is completely different from the UN OPCW report on Khan Sheikhoun [a faked chemical attack blamed on the Syrian government on April 4, 2017], which is distinguished by numerous claims about explosive effects that could only have been made by technically illiterate individuals. In very sharp contrast, the voices that come through the engineering report are those of highly knowledgeable and sophisticated experts.

“A second issue that is raised by the character of the OPCW engineering report on Douma is that it is entirely unmentioned in the report that went to the UN Security Council. This omission is very serious, as the findings of that report are critical to the process of determining attribution. There is absolutely no reason to justify the omission of the engineering report in the OPCW account to the UN Security Council as its policy implications are of extreme importance.”

Jihadis Stage Large Offensive in Idlib, Attack Russia Hmeymim Base, Syrian Army

May 22 (EIRNS)—Today, the Hayat Tahrir ash-Sham (HTS) terrorists, formerly known as the al-Nusra Front, affiliated with Al Qaeda, launched three massive attacks against the Syrian Arab Army in Kafr Nabuda in Idlib province, firing at Russia’s Hmeymim airbase 17 missiles, which, however, were either intercepted or fell short of their targets, RT and TASS reported. The attack failed, and the Syrian army killed 150 terrorists and destroyed 3 tanks, and 24 trucks with mounted machine guns.

According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, militants also tried to break through government defenses near the Al Hayrat settlement, TASS reported.

At the Hmeymim base, air defenses intercepted 9 missiles, and 8 others hit the ground before reaching their targets. According to RT’s report, the attack included 500 militants, 7 tanks, 4 armored personnel carriers, 30 trucks with mounted machine guns, and 2 explosives-laden vehicles driven by suicide bombers.

This isn’t the first time that the Hmeymim base has been attacked by terrorists. Although previous attacks have failed, the Russian military has warned that the advanced technology used by the jihadists could be used against “less-protected targets in Syria and abroad.”

Acting Defense Secretary Shanahan Asserts Pentagon Policy on Iran Is ‘Deterrence, Not War’

May 22 (EIRNS)—Following a closed-door session with members of Congress, yesterday, on policy toward Iran, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told reporters that the U.S. priority is not to go to war with Iran, and that recent military actions in Southwest Asia were intended to serve as deterrence. Also present at the meeting were Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford.

According to the Washington Examiner, Shanahan stressed, “Our biggest focus at this point is to prevent Iranian miscalculation. We do not want the situation to escalate.” Associated Press quoted him as saying that recent military deployments to Southwest Asia have given Iran “time to recalculate,” and as a result, “We have put on hold the potential for attacks on Americans…. I just hope Iran is listening. We’re in the region to address many things, but it is not to go to war with Iran…. There haven’t been any attacks on Americans. I would consider that a hold,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that the threats that we’ve previously identified have gone away. I think our response was a measure of our will and our resolve that we will protect our people and our interests in the region.”

Little has been reported on statements by Pompeo and Dunford. Dunford reportedly cancelled a trip to Europe to be present at the briefing.

Washington Ultimatum to Turkey To Give Up S-400 in Two Weeks or Face Penalties

May 22 (EIRNS)—CNBC reported today that the State Department has given Turkey a two-week deadline, by which it must either give up purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system or face severe penalties. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov today said that, “as Ankara also expressed, the S-400 deal is a done deal. Russia considers this kind of [U.S.] approach extremely unfavorably. It is unacceptable.”

Specifically, the penalties would mean removal from Lockheed’s F-35 program, forfeiture of promised F-35 jets, imposition of U.S. sanctions, and “potential blowback from NATO,” CNBC reports. According to the Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey currently has 4 pilots and 47 military personnel training in the U.S. in the F-35 program.

Instead of the S-400, Turkey would have to purchase Raytheon’s Patriot Missile Defense system, or face the promised reprisals. This is reportedly State’s final offer; Turkey has until the end of the first week in June to act. Defense Minister Hulusi Akar has said that Turkey has “fulfilled its obligations” under the F-35 program, but also said that the government is “making the necessary preparations for what to do” in the event that penalties are applied under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), Hurriyet reported. He further stated that Turkish personnel have been sent to Russia for training in the S-400 system and that this will continue for a period of months.

An anonymous State Department official told CNBC that “NATO countries need to procure military equipment that is interoperable with NATO systems. A Russian system would not meet that standard. We underscore that Turkey will face very real and negative consequences if it completes its S-400 delivery.”

Deadly Riots Provoked by Losing Candidate Prabowo in Indonesia

May 22 (EIRNS)—Deadly riots took 6 lives and injured over 200 after the official results of the April 17 presidential election in Indonesia were released on May 21, confirming the quick count giving incumbent President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) about 55% to his opponent Prabowo Subianto’s 45%. Probowo had refused to concede the election, claiming fraud, and “predicted” there would be violent protests if the election were not reversed.

Probowo, the son-in-law of former dictator Suharto, ran and lost against Jokowi in 2014. His campaign this year was overtly anti-China, threatening to “re-open” every Chinese-funded infrastructure and industrial Chinese investment if he won. The vast majority of infrastructure projects in the country are Chinese, including the high-speed rail project to connect Jakarta with Bandung.

Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, but, although nearly 90% of the population is Muslim, it is a pluralist state, following the policy of founding father Sukarno of tolerance for other religions. Nonetheless, there have been anti-Chinese riots in the past, including the 1965 mass slaughter of the followers of Sukarno, which included many ethnic Chinese Indonesian citizens.

Indonesian authorities have limited access to social media platforms, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram after rioters fought security forces and set fire to a police dormitory and vehicles in Jakarta today. Suharto, a former general, has some support in the military, but is unlikely to be able to provoke a coup. The rioters chanted “Usir Cina” (kick Chinese out), according to press reports.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Chinese Ambassador Tells Fox, Charges against Huawei and Beijing Are ‘Groundless, Without Evidence’

May 22 (EIRNS)—In an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier today, China’s Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai pointed out very simply that the charges against China and Huawei—claims that the company is funded by China’s National Security Agency, the People’s Liberation Army and national intelligence service—are “politically motivated.”

Huawei, he said, is a “normal Chinese company,” and attacks on it are worrisome, because they could “interfere with the normal functioning of the market … and disrupt normal flows of trade and investment.” These could also weaken people’s belief in the values that used to be preached, such as fairness, openness and competition. He responded to Baier’s repeating FBI Director Christopher Wray’s hysterical warning last February, that China is the greatest threat faced by the U.S., with the question: “How can people have such a short memory? Don’t they remember the revelations of former NSA analyst Edward Snowden?” The problem, Cui told Baier, “is that they never show any evidence.”

Cui deftly dispensed with other standard questions, regarding the alleged Uighur “camps” in Xinjiang, human rights violations, the South China Sea, and whether China was just “waiting out Trump” until after the 2020 elections. To the last question, he replied that, “We don’t have such illusions,” and that “we don’t get involved in domestic politics … and honestly, we can’t make sense of it!” Nor, he said, is China interested in exerting “global dominance.”

On the issue of trade talks, Cui stated that China is ready to “continue our talks with our American colleagues to reach a conclusion. Our door is still open.” A good deal, he emphasized, would serve the interests of both countries, as long as they are based on mutual respect and mutual benefit. Baier suggested that perhaps Xi Jinping had “misjudged” Trump, when the U.S. President demanded changes in China’s domestic laws, and Xi ultimately couldn’t give in to such demands.

The real point, Cui said, is that China proceeds from the standpoint of defending the interests of the country and of its 1.4 billion people. Any review of trade talks will show that it’s the U.S. that has frequently “changed its mind” and abruptly backed off from deals that had been tentatively agreed on previously. China is ready to take action, to purchase more U.S. products, but both sides must demonstrate political will to arrive at a good deal, he said.

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