WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 2019

Volume 6, Number 130

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

• U.S., Russia, China Cooperation Portends New Paradigm for Mankind
• The U.S. Will No Longer Be the Police of the World, President Trump Demands
• Trump Tells Carlson, We Fought the Wrong Country-Iraq Didn’t Attack the World Trade Center
• President Insists We Must End the Homelessness and Filth in Our Cities
• Col. Macgregor Explains, Trump Will Bring Peace to Northeast Asia Despite Neocons
• Liberals Link Tulsi Gabbard to LaRouche, Because She Warned of War Danger
• New Pentagon Report Paints Russia as ‘Gray Zone’ Adversary of U.S.
• Southern Command Chief on Anti-China Tour in Argentina, Chile
• British Empire Claims Ownership of Hong Kong Rioters
• Columnist Calls Attention to Potential for U.S., Russia, China to Together Build a New World Order
• Chinese Foreign Ministry Emphasizes Success of Xi-Trump Dialogue, Welcomes Experts’ Letter
• Turkey’s Erdogan Makes State Visit to China, Has Long Dialogue with Host President Xi
• EU Nominates Von der Leven for EU Commission, Lagarde for European Central Bank

EDITORIAL

U.S., Russia, China Cooperation Portends New Paradigm for Mankind

July 2 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump’s visit to North Korea, meeting with Kim Jong Un, while restoring the “Singapore Spirit” in bilateral relations between the U.S. and North Korea, actually represents far more than that—potentially a major leap for mankind. Helga Zepp-LaRouche noted today that, while the meeting came up suddenly on Sunday, June 30, it “reflects the entire process leading up to the meeting between Trump and Putin, Trump and Xi Jinping—and I think there has been in the background an absolutely incredible effort to go in this direction.  This is a big step in the direction of the Four Powers working together.”

The “Four Powers” refers to cooperation between the world’s major Eurasian cultures—Russia, China, India and the U.S.—as representative of the best of European culture—which Lyndon LaRouche defined as the minimum combination of political and cultural entities with the strength required to extinguish the dying embers of the British Empire, and create a New Paradigm for mankind based on cooperative economic development and a new Renaissance uniting the positive heritage of each of the world’s successful cultures.

It cannot be overlooked that both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin met recently with Kim Jong Un, leading into the historic private meetings between President Trump and both Xi and Putin in Osaka, in which Trump asserted his personal diplomatic control. National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were left out of the one-on-one summits—Bolton was even sent off to Mongolia throughout.

As President Putin told the Financial Times last week, progress on the North Korea issue can only happen if there are absolutely solid security guarantees for North Korea, especially since the North Koreans are fully aware of what happened to Iraq and Libya when they gave up their nuclear weapons programs. For obvious reasons, such guarantees can only be accomplished by Russia and by China in cooperation with the U.S.

The central question which remains to be addressed: Can the cooperation between the U.S., Russia and China on strategic issues be extended to the crucial issue of reforming the tottering international financial infrastructure? Even the Bank for International Settlements has this week warned of the wildly overextended corporate debt bubble, bloated by leveraged debt very similar to the sub-prime mortgage bubble that sparked the 2008 blow-out, and near collapse of the Western financial system.

Zepp-LaRouche raised today: “I think that this kind of cooperation, Russia, China and the United States, is getting very, very close to the potential of extending it to areas which need to be addressed, like the pending financial crisis, the New Bretton Woods, the urgent reform of the system, but that is possibly not so impossible as people may think.” She pointed to an article published Monday by CNBC by Michael Ivanovitch—a former official at the OECD, a former economist at the New York Federal Reserve, and a Columbia University economics professor—titled “Trump Is Laying Groundwork for a New World Order Built around the U.S., China and Russia.”

Ivanovitch writes that the largest business delegations at the June 6-8 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum was from the United States (it is also the fact that the largest foreign delegation to the Dalian “Summer Davos” Forum now taking place in China is from the U.S.). Ivanovitch points to the interference with Trump’s intention to forge close relations with Russia and China from within his own Cabinet, which have been sidelined in the recent diplomatic achievements, and that Trump is aware that achieving his intention in this regard is crucial for his reelection in 2020.

The next crucial event is the July 20 fiftieth anniversary of human landing on the Moon. The Schiller Institute is holding celebrations internationally, to galvanize the growing momentum for global cooperation in Mankind’s next 50 years. Zepp-LaRouche pointed today to the urgent necessity to “transform the U.S. economy into a space economy, to make it possible for Trump’s idea of putting man and woman on the Moon by 2024 to actually succeed…. If you look at the bills of materials which are required to do the colonization of the Moon-Mars program,” she added, “it will only function if you increase the productivity of the whole world economy,” including a breakthrough in fusion power. “You have not enough industrial and technological scientific capacity right now, in the world, to do the kinds of transformations which are required,” she said. “So there is no reason to regard any country as an enemy, because even if the whole world is pooling our total industrial capacity, it still does require a jump to a new economic platform, the training of one or two generations—it does require a tremendous jump.  So it’s not a smaller cake which has to be divided among squabbling people: It’s the question of how do you define a new economic platform where new degrees of freedom are possible.”

It is in this level of reality that resides the urgency of achieving the exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche, making his ideas available to all the citizens of the world.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

The U.S. Will No Longer Be the Police of the World, President Trump Demands

July 2 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump told Fox’s Tucker Carlson that after 19 years in Afghanistan, the U.S. force is no longer there to win a war, but has become a police force, and it must end.

In the interview broadcast July 1, Trump said: “With Afghanistan, it’s 19 years and we should not have been there 19 years…. And we have the greatest fighters in the world.  But when you’re 19 years, you’re really becoming like a police force. So we have pulled it back.  We’re actually negotiating with various people. But we want to get out.  We want to get out of a lot of areas that we’re in.  We shouldn’t be there. We’re the policeman for the whole world.

“You know, if you look at Russia, Russia doesn’t police the world. Russia has—you know, they police Russia. You look at China.  They don’t police.  They don’t have troops everywhere. What they have is, they have people taking the minerals out of the ground.  They don’t have troops.

“We have a case in Afghanistan where we have troops on one mountain, it’s a very mountainous country, rough country, beautiful country, actually in a lot of ways.  But we have troops, and on the other mountain ridge, China is there with big excavating equipment, taking out minerals.  They don’t have [troops]—now, it’s pretty dangerous for them, because their people tend to be shot as they’re operating the machines.  You know, it’s not exactly the safest place.”

Trump Tells Carlson, We Fought the Wrong Country—Iraq Didn’t Attack the World Trade Center

July 2 (EIRNS)—In the Tucker Carlson interview broadcast on Fox on July 1, President Donald Trump, in an aside, made the following point: “When you look at the World Trade Center, they were trained.  They didn’t—by the way, [the Bush Administration] attacked the wrong country.  They didn’t come from Iraq. All right, they came from various other countries.”

He did not mention that 15 of the 19 terrorists in the 9/11 attack were Saudi, but that is, of course, well known.

President Insists We Must End the Homelessness and Filth in Our Cities

July 2 (EIRNS)—Tucker Carlson, in his Fox News interview with President Donald Trump in Osaka, broadcast July 1, noted: “You’ve come to where we are now, Osaka or Tokyo, and the cities are clean. There’s no graffiti. No one going to the bathroom on the street. You don’t see junkies … some of our cities—New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles—they’ve got a major problem with filth. Why is that?”

Trump responded: “It’s very sad. It’s a phenomenon that started two years ago. It’s disgraceful…. I’m looking at it very seriously, because you can’t do that. You can’t have what’s happening, where police officers are getting sick just by walking the beat …, where people are getting sick, where the people are living in hell…. They cannot do that. They cannot ruin our cities. You have people that work in those cities. They work in office buildings, and to get into the building, they have to walk through a scene that nobody would have believed possible three years ago.

“This is the liberal establishment. This is what I’m fighting…. I had a situation when I first became President, we had certain areas of Washington, D.C., where that was starting to happen, and I ended it very quickly. I said, ‘You can’t do that.’

“So we’re looking at it very seriously. We may intercede. We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up…. But the thing that nobody can figure out is, do these governors or mayors, do they really think this is a positive? Do they really think this is OK? Because it’s not. It’s destroying their city, and destroying a whole way of life, and it’s not our country. It’s not what our country is all about.”

This useful admission is very timely, as EIR is releasing its special report on “The Bitter Truth About the Economic ‘Recovery’ ”

Col. Macgregor Explains, Trump Will Bring Peace to Northeast Asia Despite Neocons

July 2 (EIRNS)—Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.) on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox Monday night before the interview with President Donald Trump was broadcast, powerfully described Trump’s successful diplomacy in regard to North Korea. “President Trump is going to bring peace to Northeast Asia whether the neocons like it or not,” he said.

Colonel Macgregor has been a long-standing critic of the “Washington establishment” both in politics and in the military. William Craddick recently argued for President Trump to replace John Bolton with Colonel Macgregor as National Security Adviser.

Macgregor describes Trump as the “great disruptor” of the status quo, a status quo which in Korea has meant a permanent state of war, permanent deployment of troops, and a huge “money flow.” Trump knows, he said, that North Korea desperately needs help, that it could “fall apart in ways we don’t want—and I’m sure Trump discussed this with President Xi.” He continued: “We don’t want a war on the Peninsula under any circumstances. No one in Northeast Asia does. So Trump has the courage to step forward and make it clear that we will contribute to a peaceful outcome.”

Macgregor said two steps should be done next: first, declare an end to the war, which would effectively take the use of force off the table; second, turn operational control, which, in the case of war, now lies with the U.S. forces, over to the South Koreans. “That would say, South Korea is sovereign,” and that “decisions would be made by Koreans, not us. After all, it is their country not ours,” he concluded.

Liberals Link Tulsi Gabbard to LaRouche, Because She Warned of War Danger

July 2 (EIRNS)—The indelible mark Lyndon LaRouche left on U.S. election campaigns was demonstrated again last week, in the response of establishment liberal allies to Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s intervention in the first Democratic presidential debate.

Gabbard concentrated the few minutes given to her on warning that the world is on the brink of nuclear war, and that American citizens have a responsibility to reject policies of Cold War and regime change wars.

“Liberals are even mocking her and saying she’s the heir to the Lyndon LaRouche legacy,” the conservative, pro-Trump site Gateway Pundit wrote the day after the debate. Gateway Pundit cited a lunatic tweet by one “Chatham Harrison,” a Democrat who calls himself “dba TRUMP DELENDUS EST.” Harrison wrote after the debate: “Cultural heirs of the LaRouche movement. Tulsi’s a good-looking kook, and that’s a small but natural constituency.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

New Pentagon Report Paints Russia as ‘Gray Zone’ Adversary of U.S.

July 2 (EIRNS)—The U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command and the Joint Staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have released a report, entitled “Russian Strategic Intentions,” which, if Forbes’ description is any indication, is clearly an effort to maintain the British Imperial geopolitical order just as the Presidents of the U.S., Russia and China have met in Japan, last week, on the sidelines of the G20 summit meeting, and are on the verge of breaking out of that old order.

“A new report prepared for the Joint Chiefs has found that the U.S. needs an urgent change of strategy to deal with Russia’s growing influence on the world,” Forbes reports. “The Kremlin is deploying an increasingly sophisticated strategy of propaganda, political manipulation, economic exploitation and provocation to disrupt U.S. influence and restore Russia’s global standing—Washington needs to change its approach or risk falling further behind.” According to Forbes, the 171-page document is part of something called the Strategic Multilayer Assessment entitled “The Future of Global Competition and Conflict.” It focuses on the “gray zone,” where “Russian President Vladimir Putin is adhering to a global grand strategy” to regain influence over the former Soviet nations and recognition as a “great power,” and to portray Russia as “a reliable actor, a key regional powerbroker, and a successful mediator.”

The U.S. objective of “promoting and protecting the international liberal order,” undermines Putin’s strategy, and so “underpins the Kremlin’s belief that it must contain and constrain U.S. influence and activities in Europe and elsewhere across the globe.” As such, “the growing divergence among great powers (i.e., the U.S., China, and Russia) regarding what constitutes legitimate or acceptable deterrence, compellence, and escalation management activities should be carefully examined.”

Southern Command Chief on Anti-China Tour in Argentina, Chile

July 2 (EIRNS)—Adm. Craig Faller, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, spent June 23-28 touring Argentina and Chile lecturing his counterparts on the evils of China, Russia, Cuba and Iran, warning that these “bad actors” were undermining the sovereignty and democratic values of these nations. He was also reportedly coordinating actions against Venezuela.

An advocate of British geopolitical confrontation, Faller went into both countries in gangbuster mode. On June 26, Spain’s EFE news service quoted an anonymous Defense Department source travelling with Faller stating that Washington’s alarm over Chile’s relationship with China is “off the charts.”

With good reason. Despite his neoliberal credentials, Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera has strengthened the relationship with China established by former President Michelle Bachelet, such that China is now Chile’s number-one trading partner. At last April’s Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, Piñera heartily endorsed the Belt and Road Initiative, extolled its benefits for participating nations and offered to make Chile the gateway for Chinese businesses to all of Ibero-America.

Argentina’s rabidly neoliberal President Mauricio Macri has also turned to China for important development projects, most recently signing a major nuclear deal, while trying not to offend Washington or the IMF. That’s reality.

Ideologue Faller, however, is not in the real world. In an interview with Argentina’s DEF, published June 29, he ranted against the “real invaders” of Venezuela—“not only Russia but also Cuba, and more recently China.” China, he argued, is a competitor, not a nation with which the U.S. cooperates. The military drills train and educate, “and if we have to fight,” he warned, “we concentrate on our alliances with key partners, like Argentina.”

Faller insisted that of course, he wasn’t asking Argentina “to choose” its allies, but he continued, “I know where we stand and I know where Argentina stands” in terms of their shared democratic values. “Unfortunately, in China’s past, it didn’t respect sovereignty, the rule of law, democracy or human rights. So, from my standpoint China is not a reliable partner, but, I won’t ask anyone to choose.” The SouthCom commander charged there is “significant destabilization” introduced in the region by criminal organizations, corruption and these bad actors—Russia, China, Cuba and other states.”

British Empire Claims Ownership of Hong Kong Rioters

July 2 (EIRNS)—Yesterday, a mob of well-prepared young Hong Kong rioters wearing hard-hats, goggles and masks smashed their way into the Hong Kong parliament, whereupon they hung the colonial flag of Hong Kong under British Empire rule upon the podium.

The day before, Her Majesty’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt had issued a statement threatening China to keep “hands off” Hong Kong. It is “imperative that Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, and the rights and freedoms of the Hong Kong people, are fully respected in line with the [1984 Sino-China] Joint Declaration and the Hong Kong Basic Law,” Hunt pronounced. He asserted a U.K. right to meddle in its former colony—seized in 1839 during its first Opium War against China—based on that Joint Declaration, which he described as “a legally-binding treaty [which] remains as valid today as it did when it was signed and ratified over 30 years ago.” He also cited British training of “tens of thousands of Hong Kong students” every year as key to the U.K.’s “rich and wide-ranging relationship” with Hong Kong which it seeks to strengthen.

As the rioters hung up the Union Jack-emblazoned colonial flag, Hunt was tweeting that “U.K. support for Hong Kong and its freedoms is UNWAVERING on this anniversary day.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang was not impressed. “On July 1, 1997, China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong and the Chinese government started administering it in accordance with the Constitution and the Basic Law. The U.K. no longer has any responsibility for Hong Kong. Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs that brook no foreign interference,” Geng said. “We advise the U.K. to know its place, stop meddling in Hong Kong affairs in any form and do more for its prosperity and stability rather than the opposite.”

ECONOMY

Columnist Calls Attention to Potential for U.S., Russia, China To Together Build a New World Order

July 2 (EIRNS)—The latest article by CNBC regular columnist Dr. Michael Ivanovitch, posted yesterday, carries the attention-grabbing headline, “Trump Is Laying Groundwork for a New World Order Built Around the U.S., China and Russia.” He explains at the outset that he is talking about what he sees as the upshot of President Donald Trump’s meetings with the Russian and Chinese Presidents, Putin and Xi. Simply put, that “Washington has begun a process with Russia and China during last week’s G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan that could create a new world order.”

Ivanovitch is a well-connected New York City economist, who heads a geopolitical/economic consultancy which he founded in the late 1980s. Prior to that, he served variously as senior economist at the OECD in Paris and an international economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and taught economics at Columbia Business School.

Despite a sometimes cynical tone as to the motivations of President Trump and China, Ivanovitch is onto something.

“Putting it all together and lifting the sights from here and now, Trump may have started a process of enduring world peace. That concept is based on the idea that the U.S., Russia and China have been staring for years at an underlying security architecture of a uniquely binary choice: The end of humanity, or a new, hopefully American, world order built around those three key players whose economic and civilizational interests call for peaceful co-existence.

“Trump has begun a process with Russia and China during last week’s G20 meeting that could bring lasting peace and economic prosperity to the world.

“His geopolitical moves may have been mainly motivated by his reelection strategy, but they have an enormous potential for creating a new world order based on the foundations enshrined in America’s inspired and written United Nations charter,” Ivanovitch alerts his readers.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Chinese Foreign Ministry Emphasizes Success of Xi-Trump Dialogue, Welcomes Experts’ Letter

July 2 (EIRNS)—In yesterday’s Chinese Foreign Ministry briefing, spokesman Geng Shuang restated three times China’s satisfaction with the outcome of the meetings between Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump in Osaka. He was particularly strong, when asked about a draft open letter being circulated by prominent U.S. Asian experts which warns against treating China as an enemy.

Geng said he was aware of the reported letter, and “if media revelations are accurate, we commend the rational voice” it expresses. He then restated China’s view of the Xi-Trump summit:

“President Xi and President Trump just held a successful meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Osaka Summit. The most important consensus they reached is to advance China-U.S. relations featuring coordination, cooperation and stability. The two sides announced that trade consultations will be restarted on the basis of equality and mutual respect. The important agreement pointed out the right direction forward for bilateral relations, eliciting a strong response in China, the U.S. and beyond. It is further testament that a sound China-U.S. relationship is the shared wish of people in both countries and the wider world.”

If “both sides follow the principles and direction set by our leaders,” he added as a subtle qualifier, China-U.S. bilateral relations should develop steadily, “to bring more benefits to people of both countries and beyond.”

The existence of the draft letter was reported by Reuters on June 29, the day of the formal Trump-Xi summit. It has reportedly been signed by 80 former U.S. diplomats and military officers, and is being circulated for more signatures, before being published in some major newspaper. According to Reuters’ report, while the letter criticizes China on various points (domestic repression, trade issues, “greater efforts to control foreign opinion and more aggressive foreign policy,” among them), its aim is to stop a policy of treating China as “an economic and political enemy.”

“Although we are very deeply troubled by Beijing’s recent behavior, we also believe that many U.S. actions are contributing to the downward spiral in relations,” Reuters quotes. “U.S. efforts to treat China as an enemy and decouple it from the global economy will damage America’s international role and reputation and undermine the economic interests of all nations…. The U.S. fear that Beijing will replace the U.S. as the global leader is exaggerated.”

Turkey’s Erdogan Makes State Visit to China, Has Long Dialogue with Host President Xi

July 2 (EIRNS)—Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has met with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his official visit to China on Tuesday.  “I believe that Turkey and China have great potential for strengthening cooperation,” Erdogan said after meeting with Xi at the Great Hall of the People for 70 minutes. “This visit to China happens at a time of increased testing for global peace and stability. The strengthening of Turkey-China relations will also provide large and diverse contributions to regional and global stability,” Erdogan said.

Referring to China’s westernmost region, Xinjiang Autonomous Uighur Region—Reuters states that Turkey has regularly “expressed concern” over China’s allegedly poor treatment of the region’s Muslim Uighur population in what was once known as “East Turkistan”—the British news agency quoted Erdogan as saying: “It is a fact that the peoples of China’s Xinjiang region live happily in China’s development and prosperity. Turkey does not permit any person to incite disharmony in the Turkey-China relationship. Turkey firmly opposes extremism and is willing to increase mutual political trust with China and strengthen security cooperation.”

Xi told Erdogan that the two countries should take practical steps to promote counter-terror cooperation and that China appreciates Erdogan’s numerous comments saying that he will not permit “any forces to carry out anti-China activities in Turkey and attaches great store on Turkey stressing many times its support of China fighting terrorism.”

Erdogan is leading a full delegation, including Turkey’s ministers of Foreign Affairs, Finance, Defense, Energy and Natural Resources, Trade, Industry and Technology, Transport and Infrastructure, and the undersecretary of National Intelligence Organization (MIT).

In an interview with Xinhua ahead of his visit, Erdogan praised China’s Belt and Road Initiative. “We are on the same page regarding President Xi’s approach to the initiative, which is not only to improve transport and communication networks, to construct trade corridors and to harmonize trade policies and development strategies, but also to boost cultural and human ties in this framework.

“We are acting in line with the conscience that the Sino-Turkish economic and trade partnership, besides its regional benefits, has potential to contribute to world peace, prosperity and stability,” Erdogan said.

Turkey was one of the first countries to support China’s Belt and Road he said, and that “There is a natural harmony between our Middle Corridor Initiative and China’s Belt and Road Initiative. This harmony allows us to cooperate with China in large geographies such as Central Asia and Africa,” he said.

President Erdogan took a page out of Xi Jinping’s book, and wrote an op-ed in Global Times yesterday, headlined, “Turkey, China Share a Vision for Future,” in which he expanded: “As part of this effort, we have recently launched the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) Railroad Project.

“Other investment projects, which we undertake as part of the Middle Corridor, include the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge over the Bosporus, the Eurasia Tunnel and Marmaray, the 1915 Bridge over the Dardanelles, highways, high-speed railways, logistics hubs and communication infrastructure. Those projects will directly contribute to the BRI’s goal of connecting Beijing to London.”

OTHER

EU Nominates Von der Leyen for EU Commission, Lagarde for European Central Bank

July 2 (EIRNS)—The European Council of 28 heads of state and government of the failing European Union reached an agreement on nominations for four of the five top jobs in the European Union at its special Jun 30-July 2 meeting. They proposed German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen as EU Commission president; IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde as president of the European Central Bank; Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel as president of the EU Council; and Spain’s Foreign Minister Josep Borell Fontelles as High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. The fifth nomination, the President of the European Parliament, has not yet been announced.

The agreement over the four names came after the first package concocted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, which envisaged tapping Belgian Social Democratic Hans Timmermans as EU Commission president, was rejected by 11 nations, led by Italy and including the Visegrad Group of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.

Those happiest about von der Leyen’s nomination will be the Bundeswehr, after she transformed the nation’s defense into one whose planes don’t fly, submarines sink, and tanks can’t shoot. However, with a German heading the EU Commission, Germany’s image, already identified with austerity policies, is not likely to improve. Von der Leyen has strong anti-Russian and anti-Chinese views—surprise to no one.

Von der Leyen’s nomination is apparently compensation for the fact that the Bundesbank’s Jens Weidmann did not get the ECB Presidency as expected. Apparently, Weidmann’s recent public “conversion” to loose money policies did not convince his opponents, who want to be sure that Draghi’s “euro über alles” policy is continued. Nevertheless, Christine Lagarde’s nomination is quite extraordinary, because she is the second French citizen to become ECB president, out of only four since the ECB’s creation. The IMF’s role in the brutalization of Greece is an albatross around her neck.

It is not clear whether the European Parliament will approve the nominations, since on paper the gang of four only have the votes of the conservative faction. Merkel’s government coalition was split by the SPD opposition and thus, the German government abstained in the EU Council vote today, although Merkel personally sponsored the nominations. According to some reports, Merkel is relying on the “gender” issue, with Lagarde and Von der Leyen, as an element of persuasion.

Reach us at eirdailyalert@larouchepub.com or call 1-571-293-0935