EIR Daily Alert Service, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

Volume 6, Number 183

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

• Zepp-LaRouche, Cheminade Address 2019 Euro-Asia Economic Forum Think -Tank Meeting in China
• Kesha Rogers Asks NASA’s Jim Bridenstine About Fusion Propulsion at Houston Forum
• Russian Commentary on Bolton Firing Evinces Cautious Optimism
• Democratic Candidates Have Forgotten Russia Exists
• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabko Warns There Is Still Risk of Nuclear War
• Steve Bannon, Allied With Falun Gong, Steps Up Hong Kong ‘Color Revolution’ Against China
• Drones Strike Major Saudi Arabian Oil Field and Processing Facility
• No-Deal Brexit Is Major Threat, Similar to 2008 Lehman Brothers Crash, Admonishes Banker
• French, German Finance Ministers Slam Facebook’s ‘Libra,’ But Urge for ‘Public Cryptocurrency’
• Pakistani Daily Serializes Askary-Ross Document on ‘Sustained Debelopment’
• China Reinstitutes Vigorous Nuclear Power Building Program
• U.S. PBS TV Cranks Up Eco-Madness, Featuring Greta Thunberg

EDITORIAL
Zepp-LaRouche, Cheminade Address 2019 Euro-Asia Economic Forum Think-Tank Meeting in China
Sept. 15 (EIRNS)—This past week the 2019 Euro-Asia Economic Forum took place in historic Xi’an, China, bringing together over 1,000 people, representing more than 58 nations from Europe and Asia, for two days of presentations and discussion, under the theme, “Design Links to the World and Innovation Win the Future.” After the opening ceremony on Sept. 10,came a plenary, followed by many parallel meetings on topics ranging from finance and cultural tourism, to science and technology.

The Euro-Asia Economic Forum was founded in 2005, fostered by the 2005 Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The Forum has held meetings every two years since, making this week’s conference the seventh.

At the Forum’s “Think Tank Meeting” on Sept. 11, Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche, from Germany, gave the keynote for the gathering of some 100 attendees. Then later in the session, French leader Jacques Cheminade, head of Solidarité et Progrès party and former Presidential candidate, also spoke.

Zepp-LaRouche’s presentation was titled, “How To Help the West To Better Understand the BRI,” and she began by addressing a central strategic issue:

“For most Chinese, it is very difficult to understand why so many institutions in the West react so negatively to the BRI, and why an anti-Chinese mood has been stirred up recently; why in the U.S.A., for example, Chinese scientists and 450,000 students are suspected of being spies, which is reminiscent of the worst days of the McCarthy period, while in Europe, some security authorities are making similar allegations. It is difficult to understand, because the Chinese people experience the reality of the BRI from a completely different perspective.”

Zepp-LaRouche continued: “China has developed into the second, in some categories even the first national economy in the world. Eight hundred million people have been liberated from poverty, a wealthy middle class of 300 million and soon 600 million people with a good standard of living, has developed.”

She then pointed to the breakdown crisis of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system as the root cause of the current confrontations:

“The crucial point is that a paradigm shift has taken place in the West since 1971, leading in the opposite direction to the path that China has taken.

“When President Nixon dissolved the Bretton Woods System, on Aug. 15, 1971, and thus the fixed exchange rates and gold standard of the dollar, he set the course for an increasing renunciation of a policy oriented toward the physical real economy, in favor of a policy interested in monetary profits of the financial economy, which was increasingly oriented toward maximizing profits. This tendency was reinforced, by the abolition of the Glass-Steagall banking separation system in 1999, and the subsequent complete deregulation of the financial markets, which led repeatedly to the formation of bubbles and finally the crash of 2008. And because the central banks have done absolutely nothing to change the causes of this crash, but on the contrary, since then, have promoted speculation in the casino economy at the expense of the real economy through continued quantitative easing, zero interest rates and now even negative interest rates, the transatlantic financial system, today, faces the danger of an even more dramatic crash than 11 years ago.

“The American economist Lyndon LaRouche, my recently deceased husband, warned in August 1971, farsightedly, that a continuation of Nixon’s monetarist policy would lead to the danger of a new depression and a new fascism, if it were not replaced by a new world economic order.

“LaRouche also opposed the Malthusian-motivated thesis of the Club of Rome of 1972, that allegedly the ‘limits to growth’ had been reached; a false doctrine on which the entire ecology movement is still based today and which has led to a greening of a large part of the party spectrum of the West.

“LaRouche replied with his book, There Are No Limits to Growth, which emphasizes the role of human creativity as the engine of scientific and technological progress as the factor that defines what a resource is. He also warned, at the time, that the shift in values towards a drug-sex-rock counterculture associated with this neo-liberal economic policy would, in the medium term, destroy the cognitive faculties of the population, and thus not only a cause cultural crisis, but also ruin the productivity of the economy.

“Unfortunately, this is exactly where we are today,” Zepp-LaRouche told her audience.

In discussions with associates yesterday, Zepp-LaRouche reported on her trip to China and elaborated on the strategic dangers facing the planet, emphasizing that the leadership of numerous key nations around the world look to the LaRouche movement in the United States and Europe as the voice of sanity which alone is providing policy solutions to the crisis. “We have a credibility internationally which almost nobody else as an organization has.” That is one of the reasons why it is so urgent that we exonerate Lyndon LaRouche, and his ideas, she stressed.

Turning to the current international situation, Zepp-LaRouche noted that “The Hong Kong situation is very, very serious,” and is proceeding as an all-out regime-change operation being conducted by the British Empire and their allies in the U.S. and Europe, “according to the classic Gene Sharp playbook.” Another very dangerous flashpoint is Saudi Arabia, where drones two days ago destroyed a major oil field and processing facility, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promptly blamed on Iran, without bothering to present any evidence. Trigger-happy Sen. Lindsey Graham has in fact already called on the U.S. to bomb Iranian oil facilities, as the only way to get them to stop their “misbehavior.” Zepp-LaRouche warned that “if there is now a U.S.-Saudi attack on Iran, I think it could blow up not only Southwest Asia, but potentially the world.”

Meanwhile, the bankers’ Green Malthusian mobilization is escalating, with an emphasis on the late-September UN General Assembly, which is intended to consolidate the anti-human paradigm shift Lyndon LaRouche warned about nearly 50 years ago.

Zepp-LaRouche pointed to the success of the Schiller Institute’s International Days of Action carried out in 50 cities on 7 continents last week, as an example of the kind of organizing that is required to counter these dangers. “This was an excellent beginning of our international youth organizing, with the Days of Action, which did resonate: The idea that this is a global effort to counter the danger of eco-fascism and bring the world population back to the optimism associated with space travel. This mobilization should be maintained into the Oct. 5th International Observe the Moon Night, to recruit many young people and others into this effort to turn this situation around,” and provide an optimistic future based on science and classical culture.

Zepp-LaRouche concluded by pointing to the public exchange by LaRouche PAC national leader Kesha Rogers and NASA Director Jim Bridenstine, as the kind of policy discussion that is needed to get the country back on track.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Kesha Rogers Asks NASA’s Jim Bridenstine about Fusion Propulsion at Houston Forum
Sept. 15 (EIRNS)—LaRouche PAC national leader Kesha Rogers had the following public exchange with NASA Director Jim Bridenstine during the Q&A discussion at a forum on “JFK and the Race to the Moon” at Rice Space Institute, Houston, on Sept. 12. The exchange was also posted to YouTube.

Kesha Rogers: Thank you very much for your service, and thank you for being an excellent NASA administrator.

My name is Kesha. I want to let you know that I have been a very strong proponent of the space program. I wrote a report on behalf of the national LaRouche organization, and what we’re doing right now is we’re circulating a petition in support of President Trump’s Artemis program, and we’re getting quite a bit of support on campuses across the nation and internationally. And I’ll give you a copy of that report before we leave here.

James Bridenstine: I’m happy for you to help. I mean that seriously.

Rogers: Yes. My question to you is, on the subject of not just supporting the next four years of 2024, but looking into the next 50 years of space exploration, you’re talking about the Moon-Mars mission. If we’re going to send human beings to Mars, we can’t be “taking your time,” and let’s do this, getting people there in three or nine months. And there’s discussion coming up right now on the question of fusion propulsion.

So, I want you to speak on that, because the importance of this right now is, how can we actually get human beings to Mars, safely, efficiently, through 1g [1 gravity] acceleration, through advancing—maybe instead of three months, going there in less than a few weeks. And I think that’s a very important subject. Even the Russians are talking about the importance of fusion, and many countries are looking to the Moon as the basis for that, particularly on the mining on helium-3. So, I’d like you to comment on that.

Bridenstine: My goodness there’s a lot, Kesha! Thank you for your advocacy, and thank you for wearing that [NASA] shirt. Keep doing that. [laughter]

You mentioned 2024, and some people have said maybe that’s a partisan date. Remember what Kennedy said, “by the end of the decade”: He gave it a date. Why? Because that’s how you get results. And it’s important, in this particular case, when we look at why—we compressed the timeline; originally it was 2028, based on traditional budgets. The President said, that’s not good enough, so he said accelerate it. We did. He helped us with additional budget and the budget request, we did an amendment; we got that amendment over to the Hill.

But here’s the important thing: NASA has not a science problem or a technical problem. We can retire all of the technical risks you can imagine: We’re an amazing agency, with amazing engineers. We have a political problem! That’s why we’re not on the Moon right now; that’s we’re not at Mars right now. And Professor [Douglas] Brinkley has been very clear about why Kennedy was successful: It was bipartisan—and, he gave it a deadline and he moved fast, there was a race.

So, when a program goes 15 years, 20 years, and costs billions of dollars and people aren’t seeing results, that’s when they get cancelled. When we cannibalized the science mission directorate to fund human exploration, that’s when it creates a partisan fight. When we cannibalized the International Space Station to fund deeper space exploration, we create a parochial fight—I’m saying that because the Texas delegation is sitting right here in front of me. [laughter]

So these are all things that—we have a political science problem at NASA historically. I have been very clear: My objective is to fix that. I’ve been working on it since the day I got into this office.

That being said, fission—fusion, you said, we’re not there on fusion; that’s going to take a number of years. For people in the room that might not be aware, fusion of course is taking two nuclei and pushing them together and that’s basically how you get energy out of the Sun, and of course the release of energy is massive. Fission is actually nuclei breaking apart. Fission, I think, is in the short term, how do we do nuclear propulsion. It’s going to be necessary to go to Mars: Radiation in deep space is harsh on the human condition; if instead of a seven- to nine-month journey, we can make it a two- to three-month journey, it’s really good for the medical condition of the astronauts. I will also say that we can do it so safely that we can do it in a way that it could never be weaponized, and certainly we don’t want that, and we would never allow that to happen in the agency.

But I will say, other countries do it, other countries are developing that technology right now, and we should be part of it. But cis-lunar space, when you talk about having nuclear propulsion in space, being able to maneuver in cis-lunar, basically the space between the Earth and the Moon, is going to be critical for the future, from a national security perspective for all kinds of reasons I’m not going to talk about here.

But at the end of the day, that’s a technology that the DOD is interested in. There’s no reason, if the DOD is developing it, that we shouldn’t take advantage of it for exploration, and it’s important.

Russian Commentary on Bolton Firing Evinces Cautious Optimism
Sept. 13 (EIRNS)—The Russians are taking a wait-and-see approach to the firing of John Bolton as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, although there is reason for cautious optimism. When asked at the TASS Press Center whether Bolton’s departure from the White House might have influence on stronger security in the world, Duma Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Leonid Slutsky replied, “There will be less Bolton-like rhetoric, particularly in both the Congress chambers, but generally speaking it will not influence the situation,” reports TASS. “At the micro level, an individual’s role is important. Speaking about the processes at a more serious level, there are more objective tendencies here that take root in the situations of the past few years.”

Dmitry Suslov, Director at the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies, National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, in an Sept. 12 analysis posted on the Valdai Discussion Club website, is cautiously optimistic. “What happens next? Naturally, one cannot expect a decisive and radical re-adjustment in U.S. foreign policy. Washington will continue to perceive China, Russia and Iran as opponents, pursue a utilitarian and mercantilist approach to its allies, and remain skeptical regarding international organizations and international law. It’s most likely that the United States will not return to the recently-jettisoned arms control system, of which John Bolton was a fierce opponent.”

Suslov argues that the personal factor should not be exaggerated, but “At the same time, Bolton’s departure creates a kind of ‘window of opportunity’ and inspires cautious optimism.” Suslovexpects that the U.S. will still seek to include Russia’s new generation nuclear delivery systems along with Russia’s arsenal of non-strategic nuclear warheads in New START negotiations, but these conditions, he claims, should be see “in many respects as a bid for a new negotiating position.” The Pentagon, he argues, still prefers a predictable arms control regime. “Therefore, without John Bolton, it may prove to be much easier to extend New START for a new term, until 2026.” It may also be easier for the U.S. and Russia to negotiate a new system of strategic stability, Suslov writes.

In the end Suslov concludes: “No radical change is foreseen, but new positive opportunities arise to reduce risks associated with American foreign policy.”

Democratic Candidates Have Forgotten Russia Exists
Sept. 13 (EIRNS)—Despite the lunatics in the Congress trying to save Russiagate to impeach the President, ten Democrat candidates recognize that Russiagate is a losing issue—in fact the word “Russia” did not get spoken once in the ranting and raving by the ten candidates allowed to participate in the ABC-sponsored debate Sept. 12 in Texas. China, on the other hand, was a favorite target, each competing for who would best stop China’s alleged threat to the human race (of which it composes one-sixth). Most of the time was wasted on climate change, guns, Trump’s “racism” and health care.

It is questionable whether Joe Biden can stay in the race, as he regularly becomes incoherent. Asked about the legacy of slavery, he answered that we need to bring “social workers in to homes and parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It’s not want, they don’t want to help. They don’t—they don’t know quite what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television—excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the,—the,—make sure that kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school—a very poor background will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time they get there.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov Warns There Is Still Risk of Nuclear War
Sept. 13 (EIRNS)—Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov delivered remarks to TASS, yesterday, warning “There is a risk that a nuclear war could break out. Negative dynamics has been especially noticeable over the past year,” Ryabkov said during the presentation of a report, entitled “New Understanding and Ways of Enhancing Multilateral Strategic Stability.” Ryabkov said that Western government moves are becoming more emotional and sometimes aggressive. “They are avoiding a substantive discussion on overdue issues and are stonewalling the work of dialogue channels, continue shattering the architecture of arms control and are deliberately pursuing a blatantly destructive line towards ruining effective treaty mechanisms in the sphere of security and stability, which had been in place for dozens of years,” Ryabkov explained. “This is a very dangerous and irresponsible behavior. It may trigger rather negative consequences for strategic stability.”

Ryabkov particularly stressed the Russian view of the importance of maintaining arms control mechanisms. “As for the military sphere, we are speaking about maintaining and strengthening control over armaments, including limiting strategic potentials,” he said. “We are speaking about a higher level of trust and predictability, about refraining from such military and political steps, which could be viewed by other international community members as a threat, forcing them to take retaliatory measures.”

He continued: “We are in favor of resuming full-fledged negotiations on ensuring strategic stability and international security…. We expect our counterparts across the pond to be ready for a meaningful and interested dialogue.” According to Ryabkov, Washington is reluctant to discuss the fact that “a multilateral approach towards arms control and strategic stability should take into account the nuclear capabilities of the United States’ NATO allies” Britain and France.

Steve Bannon, Allied with Falun Gong, Steps Up Hong Kong ‘Color Revolution’ against China
Sept. 15 (EIRNS)—Steve Bannon will release within the next four weeks a 43-minute “docudrama” film, entitled “Claws of the Red Dragon,” that lyingly portrays Huawei Technologies—presented in under the fictional name “Hua Xing”—as an instrument of People’s Liberation Army intent on destroying America. Bannon is coordinating this in alliance with the British intelligence-run Falun Gong, and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who launched a witch-hunt starting this summer to shut down Confucius Institutes on U.S. college campuses, and elsewhere, and purging Chinese-named individuals from U.S. universities.

Bannon, who made his original money working at Goldman Sachs, and who from 2005-2007 ran a black economy company Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE), based in Hong Kong, using cheap labor, considers Hong Kong as a model and a type of second home. Bannon has significant networks in Hong Kong, which raises the question of Bannon’s role in the economic-physical warfare of using Hong Kong riots to attempt to split up China.

Bannon, acting for British intelligence, seeks to provoke China into what he called a Tiananmen Square response in Hong Kong, as he told New Tang Dynasty TV network on Aug. 30: “If there is another Tiananmen in Hong Kong, the CCP [Communist Party of China] will collapse.” New Tang Dynasty is owned by the Falun Gong.

Earlier this year, Bannon formed the Rule of Law Society, whose vision, in its mission statement, is “to permit the people of China to live under a national system based on the rule of law, independent of the political system of the People’s Republic of China.” That is, its purpose is to overthrow the government of China.

In his interview with New Tang Dynasty TV, Bannon unstintingly praises Falun Gong, and its newspaper Epoch Times: “This is the power of the Epoch Times and I think that’s why you’re one of the rising and most influential voices in the United States and the world on issues related to China.”

Drones Strike Major Saudi Arabian Oil Field and Processing Facility
Sept. 15 (EIRNS)—A series of drone attacks struck Saudi Arabia’s principal oil field and one of the Kingdom’s major oil depots and processing facilities on Sept. 14, shutting down over 5 million bpd of oil production (half of the country’s total, and about 5% of total world production). Yemen’s Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack, with military spokesman Yahya Sarei stating: “Ten bomb-laden drones hit the two sites in Abqaiq and Khurais areas. We promise to widen our attacks as long as the Saudi regime’s aggression and economic blockade against our country continue.”

The Wall Street Journal’s coverage notes that, although there have been drone strikes against Saudi oil in the past, this one had an unprecedented impact, and was a game-changer, coming as it did just days before Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil company was about to issue an IPO. The Journal also notes that there had been a sharp escalation of Saudi attacks against Yemen lately, including a Sept. 1 airstrike which killed over 100 people at a detention center. Fox News reported that “the violence has pushed Yemen to the brink of famine and killed more than 90,000 people since 2015.”

Saudi Arabia, with full backing from the United Kingdom and U.S. circles as well, has been engaged in a relentless, genocidal war against Yemen over recent years.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded by saying that there was no evidence the drone strikes came from Yemen, and instead blamed Iran, tweeting that the U.S. and its allies will work “to ensure that energy markets remain well supplied and Iran is held accountable for its aggression.” Pompeo provided no evidence that Iran was behind the attacks.

President Donald Trump called Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman and told him that the U.S. was ready to “cooperate with the kingdom in supporting its security and stability.” The Prince told Trump that Saudi Arabia “is willing and able to confront and deal with this terrorist aggression.”

The actual facts around these developments are not yet clear. A Yemeni strike is certainly one possibility, but there are also forces associated with the British Empire that are eager to blow up the entire Middle East region as part of their strategy of bringing about a superpower confrontation between the U.S. and Russia and China. The Wall Street Journal took note of the fact that “the attacks happened a few days before world leaders are set to gather in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, where President Trump has said he is interested in meeting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to defuse tensions. Iran didn’t react to the attacks on Saturday, and officials have said Mr. Rouhani won’t meet with Mr. Trump until the U.S. lifts sanctions imposed after the President pulled out of the 2015 international nuclear deal.”

RT reported that Sen. Lindsey Graham quickly called for the U.S. to bomb Iran—with or without proof of their involvement— tweeting: “It is now time for the U.S. to put on the table an attack on Iranian oil refineries if they continue their provocations or increase nuclear enrichment.” Graham said in second tweet at the same time: “Iran will not stop their misbehavior until the consequences become more real, like attacking their refineries, which will break the regime’s back.”

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
No-Deal Brexit Is Major Threat, Similar to 2008 Lehman Brothers Crash, Admonishes Banker
Sept. 13 (EIRNS)—The possibility of a no-deal Brexit could have an impact on the world economy similar to the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008, according to Chairman of Société Générale Lorenzo Bini Smaghi said, according to Sputnik today. “We have several risks in the global economy. I think the biggest risk in the short term is Brexit, because it is very difficult to forecast what will be the channel of transition to the world economy. And the psychological impact on the basement, on sentiment, could be very strong, and the transmission to the financial market can also be very devastating as we saw, for instance, with Lehman Brothers in 2008. So this is something that we have to monitor very closely,” the Société Générale chairman said.

French, German Finance Ministers Slam Facebook’s ‘Libra,’ but Urge for ‘Public Cryptocurrency’
Sept. 14 (EIRNS)—The French and German Finance Ministers released a joint statement yesterday at the Helsinki Eurogroup meeting, comprised of finance ministers from the 19 euro area countries, promulgating that the European Central Bank better get serious about preparing for a “public cryptocurrency,” and denouncing Facebook for planning a privatized “Libra” virtual currency. The gist of this concept smells strongly like last month’s proposal by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney to create a post-dollar “synthetic hegemonic currency” (SHC) to both “dampen the domineering effect of the dollar,” and also “deter the yuan/renminbi” rise of China’s currency.

The statement by France’s Bruno Le Maire and Germany’s Olaf Scholz asserts that the Facebook plan would threaten “monetary sovereignty” of European states. Instead, the joint statement said, “We encourage European central banks to accelerate work on issues around possible public digital currency solutions.”

ECB board member Benoit Coeuré told reporters after the Helsinki meeting, that Facebook’s drive to create the Libra was a “wake-up call” to the ECB to accelerate efforts it had already begun a while back. “We also need to step up our thinking on a central bank digital currency,” he said, providing no details.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
Pakistani Daily Serializes Askary-Ross Document on ‘Sustained Development’
Sept. 14 (EIRNS)—The Pakistani daily newspaper National Herald Tribune started publishing, yesterday, the document by Schiller Institute authors Hussein Askary and Jason Ross on “The Necessity of Redefining ‘Sustainable Development’ as ‘Sustained Development’—The Belt and Road and Apollo Program as Sources of Inspiration,” as a three-part series.

Their 16-page document, in the Sept. 13 issue of EIR, is aimed at this year’s UN General Assembly focus on “sustainable development,” which presumes development must take place only within the constraints of limited resources, and to redefine it as “sustained development,” using the cases of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the science-driver effect of the Apollo space program to prove that there are no limits to growth. In November 2017, Askary and Ross coauthored a Special Report for the Schiller Institute, “Extending the New Silk Road to West Asia and Africa: A Vision of an Economic Renaissance.”

In addition to National Herald Tribune and EIR, Askary and Ross’s document has so far appeared on the website of Pakistani think tank Center for Global Strategic Studies, the Nigerian Railway Business website, and the Chinese Silk Road International Chamber of Commerce, and the blog site of the Chinese West Asia and Africa Studies Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
China Reinstitutes Vigorous Nuclear Power Building Program
Sept. 15 (EIRNS)—China is back to building nuclear fission reactors for its domestic market at a healthy and vigorous pace, which frightens the CNN TV network that otherwise favors the Pleistocene Age. In a Sept. 13 article, “China’s Gambling on a Nuclear Future, But Is It Destined To Lose?” CNN worried that, “With around a dozen nuclear power plants in the works, China will overtake France as the number-two producer of atomic energy worldwide within two years. If it continues with its aggressive plan, it will surpass the United States to become number one by 2030.”

CNN is forced to admit that “China is the world’s largest consumer of energy, thanks mainly to industrial activity. This is only going to increase, with households expected to use nearly twice as much energy by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency.”

Since the March 2011 tsunami that severely damaged Japan’s Fukushima plant, not only did Japan shut down new nuclear power construction, but so did other countries, especially in Asia. CNN asserts Fukushima was a “wake-up call” those countries which had nuclear plants sited near an ocean.

China has just resumed nuclear power construction this year. China has 46 nuclear reactors already in operation with a capacity of 42.8 GW and 11 under construction with a capacity of 10.8 GW. China plans to add an identified 36 GW of additional nuclear capacity.

The contrast with the trans-Atlantic countries discloses a remarkably different outlook. France stands out positively still producing 71.2% of its electricity from nuclear. Since Fukushima, Chancellor Merkel has determined to take all of Germany’s nuclear plants offline by 2022—despite the lack of tsunamis in that country—unless something intervenes. Belgium, Spain, and Switzerland are also phasing out nuclear. Other countries from Austria and Denmark, to Italy and Norway have no nuclear power stations. The United States is building two new nuclear plants, but thus far, has shut down nine older plants.

CNN article raises the specters of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island as a means to scare off development. But China, with its eye on industrialization, will not be deterred.

U.S. PBS TV Cranks Up Eco-Madness, Featuring Greta Thunberg
Sept. 14 (EIRNS)—Yesterday, the Friday Public Broadcasting System nightly NewsHour covered Greta Thunberg’s Friday For Future rally at the White House gates, against President Donald Trump’s opposition to the global warming hoax, and also featured an exclusive interview with her. PBS anchor Judy Woodruff introduced the interview saying the network is running special programming titled “Covering Climate Now,” involving 250 news outlets to “enhance coverage” of the hoax.

In the interview, Thunberg repeated her usual, monotonous litany about how she first “learned” in school that the planet is warming, and the evidence is clear about “temperatures rising” and increased “extreme weather,” and she then decided to do something. She said that we have a social “behavioral crisis,” in the way people don’t take action. But as for herself, “I am on the autism spectrum—I go my own way.” She said, “I walk the talk” on climate change.

When asked by interviewer William Brangham about her take a solar-powered yacht to the Atlantic because she refuses to fly, and whether such an “individual action” might be a distraction from policy changes, like the person who eats less meat might be, she advised that it’s best “to focus on all things,” on both “holistic and individual change.”

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