WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2020

Volume 7, Number 15

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

• President Trump Takes on Genocidalist Billionaires at Davos
• Bank of England’s Carney Tells Davos, Banks Will Cut Credit from Industries With Carbon Emissions
• Poor Greta Thunberg Rambles at Davos World Economic Forum
• ‘Clean Break’ Neo-Con David Wurmser May Have Been Behind ‘Targeted Strike’ on Soleimani
• Hearings To Extradite Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou to U.S. Begin in Vancouver
• Kremlin Counters Downing Street Tale on Berlin Meeting of Boris Johnson and Vladimir Putin
• Russia Will Put More Radars in the Arctic Amid Concern About NATO Activities There
• Moody’s Downgrades Hong Kong’s Sovereign Rating, Alleging Poor ‘Governance’ and ‘Inertia’
• WHO To Determine if Wuhan Coronavirus Is Global Threat, as China Mobilizes To Contain Its Spread
• Washington Will Host ‘U.S.’China Civil Space Dialogue’ in Spring for Space Science Cooperation

EDITORIAL

President Trump Takes on Genocidalist Billionaires at Davos

Jan. 21 (EIRNS)—As over 100 billionaires and the lords of the bankrupt Western financial system gathered in Davos today to declare their all-out war on industrial progress, with multiple panels carrying titles such as “Averting a Climate Apocalypse,” President Donald Trump not only spoiled their danse macabre with a perfectly targeted attack on their evil and lying intentions, but presented an optimistic vision of the future, drawing on the cultural and scientific achievements of the European Renaissance, coupled with a passionate call for Mankind to again act on behalf of the future.

“This is not a time for pessimism; this is a time for optimism,” the President said. “Fear and doubt is not a good thought process because this is a time for tremendous hope and joy and optimism and action. But to embrace the possibilities of tomorrow, we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse.  They are the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune-tellers…, and they want to see us do badly, but we don’t let that happen. They predicted an overpopulation crisis in the 1960s, mass starvation in the ’70s, and an end of oil in the 1990s.  These alarmists always demand the same thing: absolute power to dominate, transform, and control every aspect of our lives.”

Trump’s targets are precise: not only the greenie “prophets of doom” who peddle the fake-science climate hysteria, but he went back decades to ridicule the sources of the modern Malthusian population control fanatics. Without naming them, he pointed to The Population Bomb hoax by Paul Ehrlich in 1968, and the Limits to Growth hoax by Dennis Meadows and Jay Forrester and their Club of Rome/MIT team of quacks in 1972. What unites these forces, besides their Malthusian hatred of the human race, is that their evil intentions have been exposed and refuted by Lyndon H. LaRouche throughout this past half-century. LaRouche’s 1983 book There Are No Limits to Growth demonstrated the fake science and computer-generated fraud (as continued today with the dire predictions of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose forecasts have no more validity than Chicken Little’s warning that “the sky is falling”).

More importantly, LaRouche presented the necessary counter to these fraudsters: the real science of human progress. Look back to the geniuses of the Renaissance, LaRouche said, pointing especially to Brunelleschi’s brilliance in the building of the Duomo of the Florence Cathedral, educating a workforce in the process. This passage from President Trump’s speech could equally have come from LaRouche’s book, The Science of Christian Economy, which carried a picture of the Duomo on its cover: “Centuries ago, at the time of the Renaissance, skilled craftsmen and laborers looked upwards and built the structures that still touch the human heart.  To this day, some of the greatest structures in the world have been built hundreds of years ago. In Italy, the citizens once started construction on what would be a 140-year project, the Duomo of Florence.  An incredible, incredible place. While the technology did not yet exist to complete their design, city fathers forged ahead anyway, certain that they would figure it out someday.  These citizens of Florence did not accept limits to their high aspirations, and so the Great Dome was finally built.”

This is the vision required to defeat the evil being directed from the City of London and Wall Street today. A keynote speaker at Davos today was Bank of England Governor Mark Carney (now taking over as UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance), who openly pronounced that the Bank of England, with other central banks, will now begin to deny credit to corporations which are not “net zero carbon emitters”—a prescription for de-industrialization and mass genocide. It is these bankers—not the pathetic, abused child Greta Thunberg—who are running the deadly operation.

Perhaps it was coincidental that Nancy Pelosi held up the delivery of the phony Articles of Impeachment such that the impeachment trial would begin on this particular day, when President Trump had planned to address the world’s political and business leaders at Davos. If so, she failed to stop him, just as the impeachment trial will fail.

But the danger of global war, and the danger of the looming financial disintegration, have not abated. It is these two potentials which hold the true danger to Trump’s presidency, and his re-election. To realize the vision he so powerfully presented today, the leaders of the three most powerful nations on Earth —the U.S., Russia and China—need to come together in friendship, as Trump has repeatedly insisted, to resolve the crisis in Southwest Asia, and begin the process of building a New Bretton Woods system, to resolve the looming financial collapse and create the means to generate the credit needed to build the world economy.  This is the historic task facing the human race today.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Bank of England’s Carney Tells Davos, Banks Will Cut Credit from Industries with Carbon Emissions

Jan. 21 (EIRNS)—Speaking today on a panel entitled “Solving the Green Growth Equation,” at the World Economic Forum at Davos, outgoing Bank of England Governor Mark Carney—incoming UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance—argued that sustainability and carbon footprints are now key issues for global investors, Yahoo Finance reported. These are issues that are no longer corporate social responsibility or niche issues, he lectured, but rather are fundamental “value drivers.”

With major investors, he asserted, “this is becoming the question: What’s your plan to get to net zero [carbon emissions]? … That will determine where capital is flowing, obviously influenced by public opinion, pressure, and government policy as well. But that moving from the periphery to absolutely the mainstream is what’s going to drive transition, and, might I add, jobs.”

Carney, who is in league with BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink in “reshaping” the global financial climate to suck investments into the green boondoggle (see Morning Briefing for Jan. 21), emphasized that the Bank of England “and a number of other central banks will do this as well—stress testing their banks for a transition to net zero. The world’s largest and most complex financial system, that’s what we’re doing. At the core of the system now these questions are being asked. If you’re on the right side or the wrong side, and if you’re on the wrong side”—you don’t buy Malthusianism, for example—“what are you going to do about it? I think we’re seeing a fundamental reshaping of the financial system,” Carney said.

Coherent with this drivel, which is dominating the Davos summit, Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) presented a white paper there which asserts that decarbonizing existing portfolios isn’t happening quickly enough to solve the crisis, Barron’s reported. Entitled “Becoming Climate Aware: Mobilizing Capital To Help Meet Climate Change Goals: An Investor’s Perspective,” the report urges investors to act now—not wait for legislation or regulations to be approved. UBS’s report presents a “climate aware framework” for institutional, government and individual investors which will ostensibly close the “climate finance gap.” It points to estimates by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), claiming that more than $90 trillion is needed for infrastructure investment alone to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement—but likely intended to bail out the banking system’s massive gambling debts.

Poor Greta Thunberg Rambles at Davos World Economic Forum

Jan. 21 (EIRNS)—In contrast to President Donald Trump’s optimistic speech at Davos, child abuse victim Greta Thunberg, who spoke some time after he did, delivered her orders:

“Let’s be clear. We don’t need a low-carbon economy. We don’t need to lower emissions. Our emissions have to stop to stay if we are to have a chance to stay below the 1.5°C target. And until we have the technologies that, at scale, can put our emissions to minus, then we must forget about net zero—we need real zero.

“Any plan or policy of yours that doesn’t include radical emission cuts at the source, starting today, is completely insufficient for meeting the 1.5° or well-below-2° commitments of the Paris Agreement. We demand that at this year’s World Economic Forum participants from all companies, banks, institutions and governments:

“Immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction.

“Immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies.

“And immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels.

“We don’t want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even 2021, we want this done now.

“It may seem like were asking for a lot. And you will of course say that we are naïve. But this is just the very minimum amount of effort that is needed to start the rapid sustainable transition.”

On the sidelines of the Davos summit, when the Wall Street Journal asked President Trump whether he knew Thunberg, he said he didn’t know anything about her, but remarked that she is clearly very “angry.”

‘Clean Break’ Neo-Con David Wurmser May Have Been Behind ‘Targeted Strike’ on Soleimani

Jan. 21 (EIRNS)—Evidence has surfaced suggesting that David Wurmser, one of the neo-conservative co-authors of the Iraq weapons of mass destruction hoax and earlier of “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” a document written for Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, was the author of the policy behind the Jan. 3 U.S. assassination of Qasem Soleimani. Bloomberg columnist Eli Lake, in a syndicated column posted on Jan. 14, reported that Wurmser, who had been brought into the National Security Council by then-National Security Adviser John Bolton, wrote a series of memos to Bolton in May and June of 2019 arguing for what he called “regime disruption” in Iran. According to Lake, Wurmser claimed that the Iranian leadership expected the United States “to respond to its provocations in a measured and predictable fashion,” as Lake put it. Therefore, if the U.S. acts outside of this construct, the Iranian leadership gets confused or “disrupted.”

After Iran downed the U.S. reconnaissance drone in June 2019, Wurmser advised Bolton that the U.S. response should be overt and designed to send a message that the U.S. holds the Iranian regime, not the Iranian people, responsible. “This could even involve something as a targeted strike on someone like Soleimani or his top deputies,” Wurmser wrote in a June 22 memo. In these memos, Wurmser is careful to counsel against a ground invasion of Iran, says Lake. Wurmser says the U.S. response “does not need to be boots on the ground (in fact, it should not be).” Rather, he stresses that the U.S. response should be calibrated to exacerbate the regime’s domestic legitimacy crisis.

Jon Schwarz, a reporter for The Intercept, wrote two days later that Wurmser’s memos, have a twofold significance. “First, while it was already clear that the neo-conservative movement has powerfully influenced the Trump Administration,” he writes, “Wurmser’s role on Iran is further evidence of the sway that neo-conservatism still holds on the U.S. right—despite the catastrophic invasion of Iraq and Trump’s disavowal of the war. Second, it demonstrates that neo-conservatives such as Wurmser still cherish a peculiar theory about Iranian society.”

That “peculiar theory,” often espoused by Pompeo though Schwarz doesn’t mention that, is that if the U.S. disrupts the regime, the people of Iran will turn on it, overthrowing its oppression, but in fact this hardly ever happens. “We should definitely consider the possibility that the neo-cons don’t know what they’re talking about,” Schwarz writes. “And yet, here we are, with those self-same neo-cons again helping shape our foreign policy in delusional and dangerous ways.” In fact, these are the Beast-men, so identified by Lyndon LaRouche after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, because of their brutality and ignoble lies.

Robert Bridge, an American journalist living in Moscow, writes in a Jan. 20 op-ed for RT that “The revelation that Wurmser was feeding Bolton advice sheds a much-needed light—albeit an opaque one—on Trump’s inexplicable decision in early January to ‘take out’ Gen. Qasem Soleimani.” So the question now is: “What could have compelled Trump to place any trust in Wurmser, whose résumé reads like that of a bull in a china shop?” Bridge asks. “One possibility is that Trump had no idea Wurmser was feeding Bolton and other members of his administration what amounted to yet more regime change shenanigans in the Middle East.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Hearings To Extradite Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou to U.S. Begin in Vancouver

PARIS, Jan. 21 (EIRNS)—Le Figaro’s Montreal correspondent Ludovic Hirtzmann reports today on the beginning of the extradition hearing of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, which began yesterday in Vancouver. Meng was arrested on Dec. 1, 2018 by Canadian authorities at Vancouver airport over a year ago at the request of the U.S. on charges that she violated U.S. sanctions against Iran.

The alleged sanctions violation occurred when, during a 2013 presentation to Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. (HSBC), Meng allegedly deceived HSBC into clearing transactions in Iran through Skycom, a Huawei subsidiary, thus violating U.S. sanctions against Iran. Meng supposedly told HSBC that Skycom was a partner, rather than a subsidiary, which put HSBC at risk of violating sanctions, according to the New York Times.

The Canadian court must prove “double criminality”—that is, whether what she is accused of constitutes a crime in Canada, which is the only way extradition can be justified. Canada has no sanctions policy against Iran. China’s semi-official Global Times reported Jan. 20 that new documents have surfaced bolstering the defense’s assertion that Meng didn’t deceive HSBC about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran, as the bank knew about that relationship from some years earlier.

This week could be decisive for the future of Sino-Canadian relations, which have been very tense since Meng’s arrest, reports Hirtzmann. Among informed circles in Canada, nobody understands why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau caved into the U.S. demand for Meng’s arrest. Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien told Canada’s CTV on Dec. 20, 2019: “It’s a trap that was set to us by Trump, and then it was very unfair, because we paid the price for something that Trump wanted us to do.”

Shortly after Meng’s arrest, China arrested two Canadian citizens, accusing them of espionage.

Canada is quite unhappy with this whole situation, reports Le Figaro. Totally dependent on the U.S. for its trade, it had moved to diversify towards China. During the last 10 years, China became Canada’s second largest trading partner, after the U.S. According to the Canadian Institute of Statistics, between 2001 and 2016, trade between both countries went from $11 billion to $64.4 billion.

At one point, Trudeau was even hoping to sign a free trade agreement with China, but the arrest of Meng and the Chinese arrests of the Canadians have resulted in a huge 34% drop in all trade. This situation could last for years, if all recourses are used. Canada has the option of dismissing the hearings, which, according to Hirtzmann, it has the right to do, but risks increasing tensions with the U.S.

Kremlin Counters Downing Street Tale on Berlin Meeting of Boris Johnson and Vladimir Putin

Jan. 21 (EIRNS)—Russia is disputing the British account of the Jan. 19 meeting in Berlin between U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the sidelines of the international conference on Libya in Berlin. “In general, the contact was brief, but, at the same time, quite constructive, with elements of a conciliatory approach, let’s put it that way,” Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters at the Kremlin this morning. He stressed that British reports did not convey the atmosphere of that meeting. “At least, the essence of the contact is clearly different from the essence of Downing Street’s report on the conversation. We can state that,” Peskov said without going into further detail.

Earlier, an unnamed high-ranking source in Moscow told TASS that it was Johnson who had sought out the meeting with Putin and he sounded quite conciliatory during their brief conversation. “We were surprised by commentaries from Downing Street about a meeting of Johnson and Putin. To begin with, it was Johnson himself who was seeking contact with the Russian side. Secondly, his tone was closer to conciliatory, there were no harsh statements whatsoever. Thirdly, the main message of the British Prime Minister was a bid to improve relations with Russia,” the source said.

On Jan. 19, the day of the meeting, the British Prime Minister’s office posted a statement which claimed that Johnson told Putin that “there will be no normalization of our bilateral relationship until Russia ends the destabilizing activity that threatens the U.K. and our allies and undermines the safety of our citizens and our collective security.” On the same day, the Kremlin reported, “Vladimir Putin met with Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen during a recess in the talks. The discussion focused on bilateral issues and international problems, including the Libya settlement.”

Russia Will Put More Radars in the Arctic Amid Concern about NATO Activities There

Jan. 21 (EIRNS)—Russia has taken a decision to increase its radar coverage of the Arctic with not just ordinary radar but with an advanced radar said to be capable of tracking hypersonic vehicles and stealth aircraft. The Russian Defense Ministry has already ordered five sets of the radar at issue, called the Rezonans-N, three of which have been installed in Russia’s far north, but a source told TASS yesterday that the ministry has decided to order five more. After all the ten radars are deployed in the Russian Arctic, the “northeastern missile-dangerous area will be fully covered by the ‘hunters’ for hypersonic targets,” the source added.

The Defense Ministry’s radar plans come as Russian diplomats are expressing concern about NATO’s increasing activities in the Arctic. “Of course, we are alarmed by the increasing activity of the North Atlantic alliance in the Arctic. We are saying this to our partners and to the global public honestly and frankly,” Russian envoy to the Arctic Council Nikolai Korchunov told journalists on Jan. 20, reported TASS. “The growing activity of non-Arctic NATO member countries in the Arctic is of special concern to us,” he replied to a reporter’s question.

“We are facing a new phenomenon, when non-Arctic countries in NATO adopt their military Arctic strategies or issue reports and other strategic documents which justify the expediency of their military presence in polar latitudes,” Korchunov went on to say. “This undermines efforts to preserve the Arctic region as a zone of peace, stability and constructive cooperation.”

ECONOMY

Moody’s Downgrades Hong Kong’s Sovereign Rating, Alleging Poor ‘Governance’ and ‘Inertia’

Jan. 21 (EIRNS)—In a clearly political move aimed at China, Moody’s rating agency yesterday downgraded Hong Kong’s sovereign rating, charging that the Special Administration Region (HKSAR) government hadn’t demonstrated “tangible” plans to address the city’s political and economic issues and had shown poor “governance” in dealing with the protests of the past several months. Both legislative and executive branches are characterized by “inertia,” Moody’s claimed.

Unmentioned, of course, is the reality that color revolution provocateurs and affiliated violent anarchists played a major role in orchestrating the protests and resulting upheaval. Moody’s argues that the HKSAR government has shown no “effective response” to the concerns that have contributed to the protests. The factors behind the protests are “deep-seated” and “intractable,” the ratings agency stated, and stimulus packages offered by the government to address some of the problems have been inadequate.

Yesterday’s report followed a similar one Fitch Ratings issued last September, which cut Hong Kong’s sovereign rating by one notch, to AA from AA+. Moody’s also cut Hong Kong’s main rating by one notch to Aa3 from Aa2. According to South China Morning Post, the report argued that despite the “One Country, Two Systems” policy, which grants Hong Kong autonomy, the “lack of clarity” in how the government is addressing the political and economic issues raised by the protesters, suggests that Beijing is placing greater “constraints” on Hong Kong’s institutions. And, it warned, “changes in the autonomy of Hong Kong’s institutions raise the risk that actions by foreign governments negatively impact its competitiveness and economic strength and hinder the effectiveness even further.”

The Hong Kong government issued a statement strongly disagreeing with Moody’s assessment, declaring that the new rating falls way out of line with Hong Kong’s sound credit fundamentals, the Wall Street Journal reported.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

WHO To Determine if Wuhan Coronavirus Is Global Threat, as China Mobilizes To Contain Its Spread

Jan. 21 (EIRNS)—The World Health Organization (WHO) will meet tomorrow to determine whether the outbreak of the 2019-nCoV novel coronavirus, which first emerged in Wuhan, China, constitutes a global health emergency.

There are now 324 confirmed cases of the virus in China and 6 deaths, as of this writing; a few isolated cases are reported in Thailand, South Korea, and Japan. Two patients in the Philippines and Australia have shown symptoms of the virus and are being monitored, and the first case in the U.S. was identified in Seattle, in a man who had traveled from Wuhan. China’s National Health Commission confirmed human-to-human transmission.

China is responding to the outbreak very seriously. Yesterday, Xinhua reported, President Xi Jinping called for “maximum effort” to contain the virus. Premier Li Keqiang emphasized that “no effort should be spared” in controlling and preventing the virus, and urged coordination among Beijing, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao to prevent the virus’s spread.

Malicious media coverage is suggesting that China may attempt a cover-up, recalling the way it handled the 2002-2003 epidemic of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). China’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission has warned against any failure to report cases. Nonetheless, Peter Cordingley, who served as WHO spokesman during the SARS crisis, charged yesterday that Beijing has been “lying about the spread of the Wuhan flu virus since the start,” South China Morning Post reported him as saying.

There is great concern over the fact that as of Jan. 24, millions of Chinese—as many as 400 million—will begin traveling to meet with family and friends to celebrate the Lunar New Year. There has been no indication that travel will be canceled, and a range of preventive measures are being put in place to protect travelers and those they come into contact with. The novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV is considered to be less virulent than SARS, which is also a coronavirus, and those most severely affected tend to be people who are already in poor health. Nonetheless, according to Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “This is an evolving situation and … we do expect additional cases in the United States and globally,” the Washington Post reported.

Washington Will Host ‘U.S.-China Civil Space Dialogue’ in Spring for Space Science Cooperation

Jan. 21 (EIRNS)—The U.S. Department of State will co-chair a meeting of the U.S.-China Civil Space Dialogue this spring NASA has confirmed, Andrew Jones reported in Space News on Jan. 20. The Space Dialogue was established through the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in 2015. It met that year, and in 2016 and 2017, but not since then. It was created, Jones explains, “in order to enhance cooperation and transparency in the face of Congressional barriers to NASA engaging China.” Technically, as long as NASA does not lead the talks, but just attends, it does not violate the Wolf Amendment. Cooperation is also allowed if the FBI has certified that the activity does not pose a national security threat, and Congress has been notified.

NASA and China National Space Agency (CNSA) have carried out some cooperation in the space science sphere, such as when China gave NASA the information it needed to use its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to photograph the landing site of Chang’e-4 on the far side of the Moon. But the most challenging and engaging missions are those that are manned, and in that, the U.S. has passed up opportunities to cooperate with China.

China has repeatedly expressed its interest in cooperation with the U.S. in exploration missions. As with the Belt and Road, it’s time the U.S. took them up on their offer.

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