TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2019

Volume 6, Number 159

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

• We Commit to the Moon-Mars Mission
• Look Out, Furbish Lousewort! Trump is After You
• Forbes Backs Down to the New Green Dictators on Wall Street
• Hong Kong Chaos Sliding into Terrorism, May Bring on Beijing Intervention
• Is Trump’s Maximum Pressure Policy Against Iran Giving the U.A.E. Cold Feet?
• Farage Slams Royals on Climate Change, Claims Real Problem Is ‘Overpopulation’ in India and China
• Greta Thunberg Joins Eco-Terrorists
• Commerzbank, Germany’s Second Largest, Is Also in Trouble’
• Smashing Defeat for Neoliberal Argentine President Macri in Primary Elections
• Professor Larry Bell Disproves Climate Mafia Projecting ‘Hottest Summer’ That Isn’t

EDITORIAL

We Commit to the Moon-Mars Mission

Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—The LaRouchePAC pamphlet, “We Commit to the Moon-Mars Mission—The True Spark for Changing the Culture,” was released today and is being distributed across the U.S. and internationally. It is available for reading or downloading in pdf format on the LaRouchePAC website’s Lead page for Aug. 12.  It will also soon be translated into several languages.

A second LaRouchePAC pamphlet, on the eco-fascist movement, is in preparation. It will expose the role of the City of London and Wall Street in funding the “Extinction Rebellion” and its associated gangs of psychotic and brainwashed ecologists, screaming that the world is coming to an end, while the bankers themselves are diverting credit away from all productive investment (which generates the hated carbon, you see), into “sustainable” investments, a new bubble to hold up the collapsing Western financial system for at best a few more months.

An article for the next issue of EIR by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, titled “Frontal Assault on Our Standard of Living; Multi-Billionaires Are Financing Climate Protectors,” locates the urgency of mobilizing the populations of the U.S., Europe and internationally, both for the Moon-Mars paradigm, and to destroy the eco-fascist paradigm, rapidly, before the situation goes further out of control. The attacks on President Donald Trump have escalated beyond all reason, from nearly every mainstream media outlet, and nearly every one of the dozens of Democratic presidential candidates.

Do not think that these attacks on Trump have any other purpose than to stop the cultural optimism he has unleashed in the Western world by launching the Moon-Mars mission, a mission proposed by Lyndon LaRouche decades ago. Also targeted is Trump’s intention that the U.S., Russia and China should be friends, working together, breaking up the British imperial division of the world into warring blocs—as also proposed long ago by LaRouche. Also targeted is the President’s rejection of the Paris Climate Agreement and the hoax of the anti-growthers, as, once again, proposed by LaRouche, whose attack on the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth fraudsters was his 1983 book There Are No Limits To Growth.

The pamphlet “We Commit to the Moon-Mars Mission” includes a petition calling on President Trump and the Congress to join the commitment to the six-point Moon-Mars proposal of LaRouchePAC. It also includes a petition calling on President Trump to exonerate Lyndon LaRouche—a unique and crucial step to free the minds of the American population from the web of lies and distortions about LaRouche, freeing them to grasp the history of the profound ideas which are now being put forward by President Trump. Excluded from all the hysterical coverage of the mass killings in Texas and Ohio last week, blaming Trump for everything, was Donald Trump’s statement on the killings, which included this profound truth:

“[W]e must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace.  It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence.  We must stop or substantially reduce this, and it has to begin immediately. Cultural change is hard, but each of us can choose to build a culture that celebrates the inherent worth and dignity of every human life.  That’s what we have to do.”

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Look Out, Furbish Lousewort! Trump Is After You

Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—The Greenies went bonkers again today as the Trump Administration issued new regulation on the Endangered Species Act, specifically restricting the use of fake climate change claims to add or remove species on the protected list. The New York Times complains, typically: “Overall, the new rules would very likely clear the way for new mining, oil and gas drilling, and development in areas where protected species live.”

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt announced the changes, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said, in a statement, that the revisions “fit squarely within the President’s mandate of easing the regulatory burden on the American public, without sacrificing our species protection and recovery goals.”

The Times quotes David J. Hayes, who served as a deputy interior secretary in the Obama Administration, saying the changes would “straitjacket the scientists to take climate change out of consideration” in which species get added or taken off. “We all know that climate change is now the greatest threat ever to hundreds of species.” TheTimes also references the recent hogwash from the UN Environment Program claiming that 200 species are going extinct every day, although they admit they can’t name a single one, and that we don’t even know most of the species that do exist—but their computer models are not to be questioned.

Forbes Backs Down to the New Green Dictators on Wall Street

Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—Forbes magazine has regularly published honest articles on climate and on the Belt and Road, despite being generally a friend of Wall Street (although in 2014 it was sold to a Hong Kong-based investment group called Integrated Whale Media Investments). However, it appears the new City of London/Wall Street decision to divert investments into anti-industry “green” investments, under the fraudulent excuse of fighting climate change, is now taking its toll on the magazine.

On Aug. 9, Forbes published an excellent and truthful article under the title: “Global Warming? An Israeli Astrophysicist Provides Alternative View That Is Not Easy To Reject,” by Doron Levin. Levin had interviewed Nir Shaviv, the astrophysicist who has collaborated with Prof. Henrik Svensmark in Denmark in pioneering the science of cosmoclimatology—the study of climate change driven by variations in galactic cosmic ray flux (with changes in solar activity being the controlling factor over decade-and-century timescales). Shaviv was the first to identify the long-term, large-scale climate change driven by the Solar System’s travels through the galaxy.

The article presents Shaviv’s work clearly, explaining that “a freshman physics student can see” that CO2 has practically no impact on climate, and that the anti-CO2 fraud is doing severe damage to the well-being of the entire world’s standard of living. Shaviv supports President Donald Trump’s rejection of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as nonsense.

But on Saturday morning, Aug. 10, any attempt to find Shaviv’s article on the Forbes website was met by a screen reading: “After review, this post has been removed for failing to meet our editorial standards”! Not only that, but a new article was posted on the website, “Why Solar Activity and Cosmic Rays Can’t Explain Global Warming,” by Dr. Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia’s Department of Geography. Shaviv responded to Shepherd on his blog on the website he maintains, ScienceBits.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Hong Kong Chaos Sliding into Terrorism, May Bring on Beijing Intervention

Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—The chaos of the past two months in Hong Kong is now reaching the point of terrorism and destruction of the city’s role in global commerce and travel. The protesters’ occupation of Hong Kong International Airport, which was originally announced to be confined from Friday, Aug. 9 through Sunday, Aug. 11, and without blocking passengers or staff, continued on Monday morning (Aug. 12) as thousands of demonstrators, mostly youth, filled the terminal. The airport was shut down as of 4:00 p.m. and all flights were cancelled, other than those already in the air bound for Hong Kong. About 180 flights were cancelled, at least until Aug. 13.

The rioters themselves began to flee the airport in the afternoon, leaving only a few hundred there. This may have been caused by a video posted on all the major Chinese websites showing armored personnel carriers and troop trucks lining up on the Shenzhen side of the border, with China’s People’s Armed Police (PAP) forces. The Beijing government announced that they were there for a scheduled exercise, but the message was clear.

A spokesperson for the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council, Yang Guang, on Monday strongly condemned the acts of a “very small number of rioters in Hong Kong who on Sunday hurled petrol bombs at the police, causing injuries,” Xinhua reported. “We express extreme anger and strong condemnation against such atrocious and reckless acts of severe crime,” Yang said. He said the rioters had “vandalized public property, blocked roads, besieged police stations, aimed laser beams toward police officers and also hurled bricks to attack them…. We appeal to all members of the public to say no to violence to help the community to restore order as soon as possible.”

A Xinhua editorial for Tuesday states: “With petrol bombs, brick-firing slingshots, bows, and even airguns, black-clad mobsters have created an atmosphere of terror on the Hong Kong streets.”

Beijing has consistently made clear that, if the Hong Kong police are unable to stop the violence, they would be compelled to send support, as the sovereign. The “One Country, Two Systems” agreement does not mean that the intentional destruction of one part of “One Country” can be ignored. The fact that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Washington proudly spent $1.7 million over the past three years training many of the people now committing acts of violence in the streets is not missed by the Chinese nation’s leaders.

The organizers of the riots have issued five demands, making clear that this is a color revolution, aiming to rip up the Basic Law and break Hong Kong from China—which will never be accepted in Beijing. Their demands: stop the extradition law (which has already been dropped, long ago); stop any reference to the rioters as “rioters”; drop all charges against those who committed crimes during the riots; form an “independent” committee (like the NED perhaps?) to investigate police violence; and, the clincher, impose universal sufferage for the 2020 elections. This last is explicitly a breach of the Basic Law.

Is Trump’s Maximum Pressure Policy against Iran Giving the U.A.E. Cold Feet?

Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—The Washington Post, in a dispatch by Middle East correspondent Liz Sly in Abu Dhabi, complains that there are signs that the United Arab Emirates may not be fully onboard with the Trump Administration’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran, “calling into question how reliable an ally it would be in the event of a war between the United States and Iran.” The signs include a meeting the week before last between Iranian and U.A.E. border authorities, and the U.A.E.’s drawdown from Yemen, both of which put the U.A.E. at odds with U.S. policy. Apparently, the U.A.E. has been rattled by the negative economic consequences of U.S. sanctions and the likelihood that the Emirates would be on the front line in a war between the U.S. and Iran.

“The U.A.E. does not want war. The most important thing is security and stability and bringing peace to this part of the world,” an unnamed Emirati official told the Post. Whether the United States could count on Emirati support should the current tensions lead to war with Iran, may now be in doubt, diplomats and analysts say, writes Sly.

“The U.A.E. is increasingly tilting away from U.S. objectives,” said Theodore Karasik of the Washington-based Gulf Analytics Institute. “Is it the weak link in the Trump policy of maximum pressure? It may be.”

The Financial Times reported on July 26 that the U.A.E. had been a major hub for Iranian offshore trade—trade between the two countries, amounting to $19 billion last year, and that trade has been throttled by U.S. sanctions. The economic consequences of a conflict would be devastating for the U.A.E., which has built a business model around its ports and airports, tourism, and regional trade, FT reported.

IRNA, Iran’s official news agency, reported on Aug. 1 that Iran and the U.A.E. had signed an agreement on expansion of security cooperation in joint borders.

On Aug. 8, IRNA wrote that while some U.A.E. officials have been participating in the escalation against Iran, others are seeking improvement in the relationship. “U.A.E.’s inclination to breaking the ice of relations with Iran was evident when it did not echo the U.S. views claiming Iran was behind the alleged incidents against the Emirati tanker in the Persian Gulf in May,” IRNA reported.

The Iranians, of course, are welcoming the shift in the U.A.E.’s policy towards Iran. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an Aug. 5 press conference that Tehran has long been inviting countries in the region to the negotiation table as it has proposed the non-aggression pact to the Persian Gulf countries. He also stated that the “door of diplomacy is open,” and that negotiations and interaction are in the interest of Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and the entire region.

While U.A.E. officials insist that there’s been no policy shift—the basis of their policy towards Iran is said to be opposition to political Islam—the country’s real weakness is that it depends on expatriates for almost all professional skills in its economy; should war break out, they would all leave almost immediately. One lever that the U.A.E. has to slow down any U.S. war plans, would be the ability to shut down the U.S. air base at Al Dhafra, which would be key to any U.S. assault on Iran. But they refuse to say whether they would use that ability or not.

Farage Slams Royals on Climate Change, Claims Real Problem Is ‘Overpopulation’ in India and China

Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—The Guardian reports comments allegedly made by Nigel Farage in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Sydney, Australia, highly critical of the British Empire’s royal family and its climate-change agenda. The comments were said to be from a recording to which the Guardian had some access, and whose authenticity was not confirmed, as no media were allowed at the meeting.

Farage said: “When it comes to her son, when it comes to Charlie Boy and climate change, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Her mother, Her Royal Highness The Queen Mother was a slightly overweight, chain-smoking gin drinker who lived to 101 years old. All I can say is Charlie Boy is now in his 70s … may the Queen live a very, very long time.”

Farage expressed hope the Queen lives a long time to “stop Charlie Boy becoming King,” but his really wanted Charles Prince of Wales to “live even longer and William to live forever to stop Harry becoming King.”

“Terrifying! Here was Harry, here he was this young, brave, boisterous, all male, getting into trouble, turning up at stag parties inappropriately dressed, drinking too much and causing all sorts of mayhem. And then, a brave British officer who did his bit in Afghanistan. He was the most popular royal of a younger generation that we’ve seen for 100 years,” the Guardian quoted him as allegedly saying.

The quotes go on to state that the decision of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to have only two children is “irrelevant,” in response to a question suggesting that women should refuse to procreate until climate change ends.

But then Farage showed his true colors, averring that the big problem is overpopulation, led by India and China: “And then he met Meghan Markle, and it’s fallen off a cliff. We’ve been told in the last week that Meghan and Harry will only have two children … and we’re all completely ignoring the real problem the Earth faces, and that is the fact that population of the globe is exploding, but no one dares talk about it, no one dares deal with it, and whether Prince Harry has two kids is irrelevant, given there are now 2.6 billion Chinese and Indians on this Earth,” Farage reportedly said.

In 2008, Farage was the only Member of the European Parliament who refused to join in the standing ovation during a climate-change speech by Prince Charles, later describing the Prince’s advisers as “naive and foolish at his best.”

Greta Thunberg Joins Eco-Terrorists

Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—Coming from a week of “summer camp” discussions with climate activists in Lausanne, Switzerland, Greta Thunberg arrived in Cologne, Germany on Aug. 10, where she was received by Luisa Neubauer, the “voice” of the German FridaysForFuture movement. From Cologne, the two drove to the scene of radicalized anti-coal protests and actions at Hambach, where Thunberg met with activists of the “Ende Gelände” group, which has been responsible for numerous blockade and sabotage acts against infrastructure and facilities of the lignite mining firm RWE there. A photo on the internet shows Thunberg standing next to a masked Ende Gelände militant.

The agenda of Thunberg’s visit there was to discuss more radical actions leading up to the major international day of action on Sept. 20. The agenda is the perspective of moving from protest rallies on Fridays to blockades and sabotage under the slogan that the exit from coal must be done right now, not in 2035-38.

Also on Aug. 10, up to 100 activists from Ende Gelände blocked the main entrance and supply road of the coal power plant in Mannheim, and occupied a conveyor belt from the coal depot to the ovens. Strangely enough, RWE and EnBW, the operators of the Mannheim facility, did not call the police but let the activists stay for several hours. If there was illusion that not calling the police would calm the situation and avoid escalation, it does not work, as RWE’s appeasement many times before has shown.

ECONOMY

Commerzbank, Germany’s Second Largest, Is Also in Trouble

Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—Not only is Deutsche Bank, Germany’s biggest privately owned bank, in deep trouble, but also Commerzbank, which the German government saved from a worse fate in the wake of the collapse crisis 10 years ago by purchasing a 15.6% share. The government wants to get out now, at least reduce its share, and has for that purpose issued a tender for consulting on it. Major consulting firms such as Ernst & Young, KPMG, PwC, may get the contract, but also might Goldman Sachs and its like.

The big problem for the government is that it needs to sell its percentage for €26 a share in order not to take a loss; however, the market value for a Commerzbank share is down to €5.16, and the total market capitalization is at €6.5 billion now, implying that the government share is worth only about €1 billion, one-fifth of what it spent when it bought into Commerzbank, at €5.05 billion.

An attempt to merge the bank with Deutsche Bank failed several weeks ago.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Smashing Defeat for Neoliberal Argentine President Macri in Primary Elections

Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—In Argentina’s Aug. 11 primary elections, known by their acronym PASO, neoliberal President Mauricio Macri suffered a stunning defeat, garnering 33.1% of the vote against the 49.2% won by the presidential ticket of Alberto Fernández, former chief of staff to former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is running as his vice presidential candidate on the Front For All slate.

The PASO is not intended to select particular slates; these have already been chosen. Voting is mandatory, but the election is more of an indication of voter sentiment, also weeding out those candidates who do poorly.

The results have unnerved Macri, who became almost catatonic when he learned them last night—rumors of cabinet changes are rampant—and unleashed panic on both global and local financial and stock markets, as international media blared headlines warning of Macri’s “shock defeat” and the threat of a “populist”—i.e., anti-austerity—government being elected in the first round of presidential elections on Oct. 27. When markets opened this morning, stocks of Argentine companies and banks crashed on Wall Street, with some companies dropping by more than 50%; the local Buenos Aires stock index, Merval, dropped by 33% in real terms, Ambito Financieroreported, and the currency markets went haywire. The peso plummeted to 61 to the dollar—a historic low—while interest rates shot up to 72%.

There’s no mystery about the electoral results: A majority of Argentines are enraged at the almost four years of savage austerity, which Macri has imposed at the behest of the IMF, to end Argentina’s alleged “isolation” and “open it to the world.” That is, let the markets run wild, and cease all protection of human beings and sovereign economic decision-making.

Speaking at a press conference today, a desperate Macri vowed to “reverse yesterday’s bad election,” and went on to blame “the Kirchneristas” (Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s allies) for today’s market chaos. The rest of the world has no confidence in Kirchnerismo, he warned, and offered the twisted explanation that by winning the PASO so overwhelmingly, his opponents had completely ruined, practically overnight, the wonderful path of economic recovery, investor confidence, and growth that he claimed was visible just two days before the PASO. And, he intoned, today’s market chaos is nothing compared to what’s coming if the Kirchneristas take power: “People will see this as the end of Argentina,” an isolated nation “with no future.”

When one reporter asked, very respectfully, what Macri would tell those Argentines who struggle to make it to the end of the month, or who can’t feed their children, Macri replied that reforms “take time … people just have to be patient.”

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Prof. Larry Bell Disproves Climate Mafia Projecting ‘Hottest Summer’ That Isn’t

Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—For everyone having read and/or heard that July 2019 was the “hottest month ever recorded,” (e.g., The Hill Aug. 2) it would now be good to now know the truth. In his newsletter and Newsmax column this week, Prof. Larry Bell, a professor of space architecture at the University of Houston, brings some of the truth together, in the form of temperature comparisons of this summer with summers past, in North America in particular.

Bell notes that the July claim was an Aug. 2 prediction by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Services (C3S), that July temperatures worldwide would turn out “on a par with, and possibly marginally higher” than the previous high of 2016. The World Meteorological Organization gave out a similar, preliminary announcement that “may have been the hottest globally” about July, promptly turned into recorded and unassailable “fact” by news media.

But then Bell gives some reports on the United States from AccuWeather founder and CEO Joel Myers, writing: “New York City, for example, has not had a daily high temperature day above 100°F since 2012, and only five such days since 2002. By comparison, in a previous 18-year span from 1984 through 2001, New York City had nine days at 100° or higher.” And from AccuWeather’s example of Kansas City, Missouri, which it reports had an average of 18.7 days a year at 100° or higher during the 1930s, “ ‘over the last 30 years, Kansas City has averaged only 4.8 days a year at 100° or higher, which is only one-quarter of the frequency of days at 100° or higher in the 1930s.’ ”  AccuWeather’s report concludes, “ ‘So 37 of the 50 states have an all-time high temperature record not exceeded in more than 75 years.’ ”

Then elsewhere in North America, University of Guelph economist Ross McKitrick reported in a Vancouver Sun article on July 23, that, as Bell wrote: “Since 1938, no month exhibits a significant upward trend in average daytime highs, while four months slightly declined.”

Most telling, Joe D’Aleo, chief forecaster at WeatherBELL Analytics, and a former Weather Channel director, reports: As of July 28, the previous week and the previous month in the United States had featured more record low than record high temperatures. Following a cold and wet spring, the summer’s “extreme heat wave” was brief and mainly featured very hot nights.

Worldwide the pattern was of a very hot summer thus far in Western Europe, a cooler than normal one in Eastern Europe and European Russia, hotter in Northeast Asia, etc.

Bell notes the prevalence of “surface and ocean temperature data ‘tuning adjustments’ by NOAA” and the British Met Office. As EIRhas reported before, these adjustments, also done in IPCC reports, include simply deciding to declare the recorded temperature readings of the 1920s and 1930s mistaken, “adjust” them lower, and thus show current readings as the “hottest.”

For the United States, funds could be saved and manpower efficiencies achieved, by simply having the Bureau of Labor Statistics track temperatures as well as employment data. Temperature readings could drop out of historical records as easily as millions do from the American workforce.

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