FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2019

Volume 6, Number 212

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

• The Challenge of War Is Its Challenge to the Mind
• Lindsey Graham Holds Press Conference on Democrats’ Kangaroo Court
• Craig Murray Documents the Slow Killing of Julian Assange
• German Proposal for International Security Zone in Syria Won’t Be Accepted by Russia
• Mass Strike Feremtn Against Neoliberal ‘Chile Model’ Spreading
• Federal Reserve Hikes Daily Cash Injections Into Banks
• African Nations and Russia Sign More Than 500 Deals Worth $12 Billion at Sochi Summit
• Russia Makes Loan To Build Egyptian Nuclear Power Plant
• Thai-China-Japan High Speed Rail Finally Approved
• Xi Jinping Announces Fourth Plenum of the CPC Central Committee for Next Week
• Rosatom Signs MOUs With Three African Countries
• Pakistani Prime Minister Refuses Demands From Street Protesters To Resign
• Lebanon Protests Continue, as President Aoun Says ‘Corruption Has Eaton the Country to the Bone’

EDITORIAL

The Challenge of War Is Its Challenge to the Mind

Oct. 24 (EIRNS)—On Oct. 17, after his great victory for a ceasefire with Turkey in Syria, President Donald Trump tweeted out a message: “This is a great day for civilization. I am proud of the United States for sticking by me in following a necessary, but somewhat unconventional, path. People have been trying to make this ‘Deal’ for many years. Millions of lives will be saved. Congratulations to ALL!”

That was true in itself, while at the same time, it also points towards a more general truth.  Over the past three years, the patriotic American people who elected Donald Trump, have fought painfully forward against the repeated efforts of British Imperial forces, along with British-linked virtual traitors in America, to illegally and unconstitutionally remove him from office.  Those adversaries have still not yet given up in their vile attempt to reverse the 2016 election (just as Establishment forces in Britain have been determined to reverse the results of the 2016 Brexit referendum there). Through peaks and troughs, the battle has raged. So far, each of their successive attempts has eventually been beaten back.  Phase One of the coup culminated in an effort to corrupt the Electoral College to overthrow the election. It was defeated.  Phase Two culminated in the Mueller investigation—which was also defeated.  Now, in Phase Three, we face the impeachment caper.  Every day, a new “smoking gun” is discovered to supposedly guarantee the impeachment of the President.

Like the President’s victory in Syria, the defeat of Phase Two of the coup has required a somewhat unconventional path—the “Mueller Dossier” campaign of the Lyndon LaRouche political movement.  This has given the defense of the President and the Constitution a “cutting edge” which was instrumental in its victory, regardless of the relatively small number of citizens directly involved in it. In autumn of 2017, that movement put a dossier into mass-circulation which forced its readers to face the fact that it was a foreign power—not Moscow, but the British Empire—which had intervened in the U.S. elections, and after failing to defeat Trump in those elections, had used captive elements of the U.S. government conjointly with foreign intelligence services to try illegally to force him out of office.

The way these shocking facts were proven was also unconventional—by showing, chapter and verse, that the identical British and British-steered institutions and even identical individuals, like Robert Mueller, were used to frame Lyndon LaRouche in 1988-89, and Donald Trump today!

The unconventional mass intervention along these lines gave a huge factitious advantage to everyone who stepped in to defend the President and the Constitution.  Namely, if the coup-plotters tried to refute the “Mueller Dossier” charges, they would find themselves inadvertently publicizing those very charges and thus bringing the late Lyndon LaRouche’s personal identity and ideas back into the limelight where Americans could use them.  If they kept silent, the charges would be widely accepted—as they have been!  What changes we have seen!

Now Phase Two has petered out after Bob Mueller’s pathetic Congressional testimony—but after a few weeks, Phase Three suddenly popped up with renewed virulence—the drive for impeachment. At the same time, a whole new dynamic has entered the equation.  It is clear to everyone on the inside that the parasitic world financial system is moving swiftly towards the abyss—even if they all agree that “outsiders” should not be allowed to suspect this just yet.  Don’t speak of another 2007-09 collapse.  History does not repeat itself—while additionally it is clear that the resources used to cover over that earlier phase of collapse no longer exist, after years of quantitative easing and zero and even negative interest rates.

From the top, this Phase Three owes its suddenness and its surprising virulence—if you consider that none of the previous charges against the President could be substantiated—to the masters in London, who cannot tolerate the thought that when their system blows out, the United States will be headed by a figure who will probably not behave himself and act on their orders as George W. Bush and Barack Obama did earlier.  While meanwhile, down below, on the level of the dirty intelligence operatives and such, their high dudgeon stems from their hope that when the Justice Department reports from Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney Durham finally appear and incriminate them, they can somehow write those reports off, as somehow the products of a President desperately trying to avoid impeachment.  (A part which he refuses to play.)

London apparently hopes that the impeachment charade can impede the President, or take his eyes off the ball of the financial collapse, at a coming crucial moment.  They succeeded in intimidating Bill Clinton out of his proposals for a “new world financial architecture” by means of an equally worthless impeachment charade earlier.

Thus at the present moment, we, the loyal Americans, are called to a complicated sort of war on two fronts, which will combine, intertwine and then separate again, forcing us to be ever on the alert in our decidedly “unconventional” tactics. While continuing to creatively use the LaRouche case in the battle, we can now bring in massive evidence regarding Obama’s corrupt operation with neo-Nazis in Ukraine, which the adversary has thrown into the impeachment fight, and which was one of Lyndon LaRouche’s key preoccupations at the end of his life.  At the same time, the financial crisis can only be undone through an approach coherent with Lyndon LaRouche’s principles of economics. And now, unlike in 2007-09, we have a President able to take that step.

What allows this to happen now, is the massive changes which have occurred in China and Russia, as well as the United States. All three nations have been involved in the revolutionary progress seen in Syria, where China has volunteered to come in and lead postwar reconstruction efforts as part of its “Belt and Road.”  Russia’s historic conference with Africa just concluded, featured top representatives of almost every one of Africa’s 55 nations.  The ability at last to achieve a concert of the major powers, for peace on Earth, for peaceful exploration of space, and for the new world credit system designed by LaRouche after Franklin Roosevelt’s precedent, is a sure support to our efforts and a visible guarantee that they can be effective, as we enter this super-complex battlefield.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Lindsey Graham Holds Press Conference on Democrats’ Kangaroo Court

Oct. 24 (EIRNS)—Lindsey Graham held a press conference this afternoon about his resolution in the Senate to condemn the constitutional atrocity taking place in the House under the leadership of Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has announced that he is supporting the resolution which calls for a vote for formal impeachment proceedings and rules which allow for due process and fundamental legal fairness.  The resolution is gaining strength in the Senate and is intended to demonstrate that unless the House travesty changes, impeachment charges will be summarily rejected by the Senate.  Addressing the media, Graham put his Constitutional arguments into the vernacular by stating that if “we,” the Republicans were doing what the Democrats are doing, “you would be kicking the shit out of us.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Craig Murray Documents the Slow Killing of Julian Assange

Oct. 24 (EIRNS)—Craig Murray, former U.K. ambassador to Uzbekistan, published an article from his blog, which was reprinted in Consortium News Oct. 22, documenting the physical and mental decline of Julian Assange, under British imprisonment, at American instruction. Murray prefaces his depiction of the torture of Assange, by saying he has received numerous requests to republish or translate the piece, and responds: “It is absolutely free to use and reproduce and I should be delighted if everybody does; the world should know what is being done to Julian.”

As EIR, Murray, and others have repeatedly documented, Assange is being killed before our very eyes, slowly, deliberately.  The man in position to prove that the U.S. population was lied to, repeatedly, about the “Russia! Russia! Russia!” hoax is to be eliminated.   It is imperative for the oligarchy to demonstrate:  This is what happens when your dissent passes our red lines into something actually potent.   It is well past time to destroy, completely, any legitimacy which these imperial bastards continue to enjoy in anyone’s eyes.

German Proposal for International Security Zone in Syria Won’t Be Accepted by Russia

Oct. 24 (EIRNS)—Another NATO defense ministers meeting began today and Syria was expected to be the big topic on the agenda, not only because of Turkey’s involvement, the Erdogan-Putin deal of Tuesday and U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s tour of the region, but also because German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (known as “AKK”) has put forward a proposal for an internationally controlled security zone along the border which Germany intends to propose to the UN Security Council. “My recommendation is that we establish an internationally controlled security zone in cooperation with Turkey and Russia,” she told Deutsche Welle earlier this week. “This security zone would seek to resume the fight against terror and against the ‘Islamic State,’ which has currently come to a standstill. It would also ensure that we stabilize the region so that rebuilding civilian life is once again possible, and so that those who have fled can also return voluntarily.” She stressed that Europe must take action, as opposed to merely being an onlooker, and Germany should use its position as a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council, to create a basis for the internationally controlled security zone on the basis of existing UN resolutions. This solution, she said, should make it clear that Turkey could not occupy the zone in northeastern Syria permanently—a stance contrary to international law.

Kramp-Karrenbauer’s proposal has been positively received by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who expected her to brief the NATO defense ministers on it today, and by U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison. However, everyone who knows anything, knows that no one can do anything in Syria unless Moscow agrees to it, so Kramp-Karrenbauer’s proposal is not likely to fly. “We believe that it is completely unnecessary,” Russian Permanent Envoy to the European Union Vladimir Chizhov told TASS this morning, when asked if there were a need to hold a meeting with European countries on creating an international security zone in Syria.

Mass Strike Ferment against Neoliberal ‘Chile Model’ Spreading

Oct. 24 (EIRNS)—Chile President Sebastián Piñera’s apology and proposals for increasing hand-outs for people on Tuesday night, Oct. 22, clearly not sufficient to reverse 30 years of neoliberal reform and privatization of everything in sight, were met with the declaration of a 48-hour general strike by all kinds of unions on Oct. 23 and 24. People are marching; “popular town hall meetings” are being held in plazas and neighborhoods, at universities and workplaces; and other new forms of self-organization. Contacts report the mood is one of great hope, that, finally there is a real possibility of change.

This, despite the government escalating its military repression, now firing toxic water from water cannons on protesters, and there are charges of torture being used against protesters. The death toll this morning was reported to have risen to 19, with 2,138 under arrest, among them 243 children and adolescents. After a week of turmoil, bank cash machines are running out of cash, neighborhood stores are not opening, and shortages are building.

Piñera’s government is in question now, and his co-thinker in Argentina Mauricio Macri is about to fall in that country’s presidential elections on Sunday, Oct. 27. The likely winner, Vice Presidential candidate Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, drew the obvious lessons at a huge campaign rally in Buenos Aires this week.

“Let us look at what is happening on the other side of the mountains: How many of you have heard on the television or radio, or from our leaders, that our neighboring country [Chile] was the social, political and economic model to follow?” Argentines must make “a great effort to open our heads and hearts, because what they want to sell us as the ideal model for society—where the ties of solidarity are broken, where I don’t care an iota about what happens to the other person—ends up with what is happening today [in Chile]…. There are no good societies which develop peacefully if growth is inequitable and great inequality divides overtake all.”

ECONOMY

Federal Reserve Hikes Daily Cash Injections into Banks

Oct. 24 (EIRNS)—The Federal Reserve’s emergency liquidity injections into the banking system spiked upward again on Oct. 24. This showed why the Fed had announced on yesterday afternoon that it was raising its overnight “repo” loan limit from $75 billion/day to $120 billion/day, and its two-week “repo” limit from $35 billion to $45 billion per auction. What actually happened Oct. 24, Thursday morning, was that the overnight cash injections hit a new high of $89.1 billion, while demand for the $45 billion in two-week loans went way over the new limit, to $62 billion.

So, $134 billion emergency liquidity injections to the banks in one day, by far the highest yet in the crisis since Sept. 17, and another $17 billion gone begging. The Fed may soon have to increase its just-started $60 billion/month “say it ain’t QE” program of buying securities from the banks.

Since Sept. 17, the Fed keeps accelerating the liquidity bailout, and keeps falling behind the problem. It is not just chasing ambulances; it’s chasing hearses, as the number of debt-zombie companies piles up and produces zombie hedge funds, and likely by now zombie investment firms. Out of the corner of its eye, it has to be watching S&P’s published warning Oct. 24 of an emerging crisis in the banking system of India, and the financial and social chaos caused by austerity and disinvestment policies in South American and Southwest Asian countries.

These injections are looking more and more limitless. So where are the “limits on Federal Reserve lending” that the Bank of England’s former governor Mervyn King was complaining about—and said would have to be scrapped in closed-door meetings with Congress, lest we come to “financial Armageddon”?

King at the IMF (its Per Jacobsson Lecture, named for an early-years-BIS fascist with a democratic face) said the usual: “The world economy is stuck in a low-growth trap”; “We have too much borrowing, and too little spending”; “We have entered the great stagnation”; etc., the phrases that are supposed to make you think of “Green New Deal” infrastructure spending. He had sarcastic advice for the new European Central Bank president and outgoing IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde: “Stay in Washington.” Europe’s economic picture is disastrous.

But for the Fed, King listed two problems: In the 2007-08 financial blowout the Fed wasn’t able to bail out the likes of Countrywide Mortgage, or Lehman Brothers investment bank whose collateral was no good. And second, under Dodd-Frank (he didn’t actually name the legislation), the Fed cannot print money without “providing liquidity to the financial system [as a whole], and not to aid a failing financial company”.

So King said, in a word: There has got to be a Fed-run insurance program right away (not deposit insurance—bank-insurance and shadow-bank insurance) where every financial company puts up collateral and pays a premium, and the Fed can bail out any financial company at any time. A kind of “term repo lending taken to infinity.”

The implication: Forget bail-ins, we’ll need Wall Street bank bailouts, and soon.

The productive-investment alternative to bailing out speculation would not be mentioned in a Per Jacobsson Lecture: Restore the Glass-Steagall Act.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

African Nations and Russia Sign More than 500 Deals Worth $12 Billion at Sochi Summit

Oct. 24 (EIRNS)—The Russia-Africa Economic Forum and Summit held at Sochi Oct. 23-24 has resulted in the signing of a large number of agreements worth more than 800 billion rubles, Russian presidential adviser Anton Kobyakov said today. “The number of signed agreements, memorandums, and contracts is more than 500; the overall worth of only those that we know about at this moment is more than 800 billion rubles. This is a little more than $12 billion. But the meetings continue,” Kobyakov said, Sputnik reported.

Earlier, Russia announced it is writing off more than $20 billion in debt that African countries accumulated during the Soviet era. “It was not only an act of generosity, but also a manifestation of pragmatism, because many of the African states were not able to pay interest on these loans,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told TASS on the eve of the summit. While addressing the Russia-Africa forum in Sochi on Oct. 23, he called for trade between Russia and African countries to double in the next four to five years, RT reported.

Russia Makes Loan To Build Egyptian Nuclear Power Plant

Oct. 24 (EIRNS)—Russia has allocated $190 million to the infrastructure of Egypt’s Dabaa nuclear plant, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Oct. 23, reported Egypt Today newspaper. During the summit between President Putin and Egyptian Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who is co-chairing the Russia-Africa Economic Forum and Summit with Putin in Sochi, the Russian President also referred to the trade cooperation between the two countries, the construction of the Russian Industrial Zone in Egypt, and the establishment of the Dabaa nuclear plant.

Earlier in October, Deputy Chairman of the Nuclear Energy Authority Abdel Hamid el-Desoky stated that an alliance will be announced soon between Egypt and Russia to manufacture some parts of Dabaa’s nuclear reactors that have a capacity of 4800 MW. Desoky further said that a feasibility study is being conducted to manufacture parts of the nuclear reactors in Egypt, pointing out that the domestic manufacturing of nuclear energy will be expanded to reach 35% upon receiving the four reactors in 2029.

Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant, which Rosatom will construct, is planned to be similar to Russia’s Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, having an installed capacity of 4,200 MWe and supplying 50% of the energy consumed in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. Dabaa will be just the second nuclear power plant in the Arab world, after one in the United Arab Emirates.

Thai-China-Japan High-Speed Rail Finally Approved

Oct. 24 (EIRNS)—The high-speed rail project (250 kph) linking three major airports in Thailand has finally been approved today. Part of the Eastern Economic Corridor in Thailand which extends from Bangkok southeast to the industrial centers along the coast, the 220 km railroad will connect the two Bangkok airports to U-Tapao, the former U.S. airbase during the Indochina war, now called the U-Tapao-Rayong-Pattaya International Airport, serving the industrial center and the Pattaya resort. It is expected to open in 2023. The Thai government is financing about half of the public-private project, with all assets transferred to the government after 50 years.

The $7.4 billion project will be built by a consortium of Thailand’s huge conglomerate CP Group, and the China Railway Construction Corp. Importantly, Japanese banks will co-finance the project, marking Japan’s promised participation in Belt and Road Projects in cooperation with China in third countries.

Xi Jinping Announces Fourth Plenum of the CPC Central Committee for Next Week

Oct. 24 (EIRNS)—China’s President Xi Jinping announced today, following a meeting of the Politburo, that the Central Committee will hold its Fourth Plenum of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) next week, Oct. 28-31. Xinhua reported that the 300 full and alternate members of the party’s top leadership, meeting in closed sessions, will discuss the plan to achieve the “modernization of China’s system and capacity for governance … by 2035 and realized in full as the People’s Republic of China celebrates its centenary” in 2049.

This will be the first meeting in 20 months—the longest period between Plenums in recent decades, which may be because of the problems from the trade war and the Hong Kong color revolution chaos.

The reported main agenda is to “discuss important issues concerning how to uphold and improve the socialist system with Chinese characteristics and how to make progress in modernizing the country’s governance system and capacity.”

The Plenum is also expected to replace two Politburo members: Liu Shiyu, demoted for corruption earlier this month; and Zheng Xiaosong, the central government’s former top official in Macao who fell to his death last year. Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post today said that it is expected that Ma Zhengwu, chairman of state-owned investment conglomerate Chengtong Group, and top naval engineer Rear Adm. Ma Weiming, described in press reports as the “father of China’s electromagnetic aircraft launch system,” will be appointed to replace the two.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Rosatom Signs MOUs with Three African Countries

Oct. 24 (EIRNS)—Rosatom has signed MOUs with Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia. The Russian firm is also among three candidates chosen by the Brazilian atomic energy agency to potentially get the contract for completing the Angra 3 nuclear power facility. China’s and France’s nuclear power agencies are the other two candidates. The Brazilian government wants to decide by the end of the year.

Rosatom may also build a power plant in Azerbaijan. President Vladimir Putin met with Azeri President Ilham Aliyev in Sochi, on Oct. 3 on the sidelines of the Valdai Discussion Club annual conference.

OTHER

Pakistani Prime Minister Refuses Demands from Street Protesters To Resign

Oct. 24 (EIRNS)— Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has categorically said that he will not resign under pressure, in response to a planned Oct. 27 anti-government protest—Azadi March (literally translated as Freedom March)—starting on Oct. 27. “I will not resign,” Imran Khan said, talking to senior journalists and political analysts in Islamabad yesterday.

The organizer of the march, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, a senior Pakistani politician from Imran Khan’s province, is also known as one of the founders of the Taliban movement. According to Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the Azadi March has been organized exclusively to force Imran Khan to resign. “As a result of this illegal government and its incompetencies, the country’s economy has been sunk … traders have shut down businesses as a result of heavy taxation. The Muslims of Pakistan are in anguish over the state of religion in the country,” he was quoted as saying by Pakistani daily The Dawn on Oct. 3. He also claims that Khan, the 66-year-old cricketer-turned-politician won the 2018 general election illegally with the tacit backing of the powerful military.

Within the first eight months being in power, Imran Khan has made visits to long-time allies China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, securing some $9 billion in loans to shore up the economy. But economic woes persist, as growth continues to be slow, the rupee plummets and inflation rises beyond 10%.

Lebanon Protests Continue, as President Aoun Says ‘Corruption Has Eaten the Country to the Bone’

Oct. 24 (EIRNS)—As the Lebanese masses took to the street for the seventh day in a row, today President Michel Aoun broke his silence and addressed the people. Blaming the economic woes that have brought Lebanese citizens from all ethnic and sectarian groups into the street, Aoun said corruption has “eaten the country to the bone.” “Everyone who stole public wealth must be brought to account,” he insisted. “We were talking about fighting corruption every day … let’s see the bank accounts of all officials, thieves have no sects,” reported The National, a U.A.E. daily.

But it is not only the Lebanese nationals who are out on the streets—the non-Lebanese residents are also there. The latest numbers state that there are more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees and about 174,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and many are protesting in Beirut’s Riad El Solh Square, Al Monitor news website reported.

On Oct. 21, Prime Minister Saad Hariri responded to the protests with a list of economic reforms, which for the most part seem largely non-achievable, wrote Al Monitor. This was met with clear rejection on part of the protesters on the ground, who have called for a general strike in response. The demands of the protesters—even when they do not agree—stand unanimous on one front: that all demands are met. Trust has been damaged and people are hungry for change, say the protesters, who brush aside questions about Hariri’s speech and promises with dismissive answers. There are calls for a completely new regime, in the hope it would bring change and improve the standard of living.

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