MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2020

Volume 7, Number 28

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

• What It Takes Really To Free Trump From the Coup Against Him
• Trump’s NASA Request Monday Will Challenge Congress
• Pompeo Warns U.S. Governors–Cut Your Ties With China
• January Jobs Report Has a Shock–Did Trump Know Something?
• ‘Minsky Moment’ Caused by Speculators, Not Energy Producers
• Germany’s Dairy Farmers Give Milk to Poor, Rather Than Take Low Prices From Cartel Processor
• Macron Insists, There Is No Strategic Stability Without Dialogue With Russia
• Philippines President Duterte Terminates the Visiting Forces Agreement With U.S.
• UN Security Council Emergency Meeting Becomes Scene of U.S. Attack on Russia in Syria
• American in Shenyang Blasts Anti-China Racism, Compares ‘A Look at U.S.A. 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu’
• Worldwide Mobilization Needed To Produce Anti-Virus Materials and Equipment

EDITORIAL

What It Takes Really To Free Trump from the Coup Against Him

Feb. 9 (EIRNS)—We, and President Donald Trump and his legion of supporters, have defeated the intense impeachment phase of the four-year, British Empire-initiated coup attempt against him. (See the coup-promoting Washington Post’s teeth-gnashing front-page headline today, “Alarm Bells over Trump’s Resilience.”) Now we should consider what it would mean to actually free him from the extreme pressure which has kept his most sweeping campaign promises unfulfilled. This starts by recognizing that they have been unfulfilled, and that American citizens must mobilize to get them fulfilled.

The President has repeated so many times since his campaign, that he thinks it is critical to have good relations with Russia and China, as well as other major nations, and to finally end the America’s endless war trap since the 1990s when British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared regime change as “American” policy. But while Trump has made clear since Senate acquittal was assured that he now wants to do many things cooperatively with China, Republicans in Congress do not, and his own officials, like Secretary of State Pompeo, are completely opposed. This has to be changed.

A major threat to President Trump’s anti-Malthusian, anti-“Green” policies of scientific and technological development—emphatically including a Moon-Mars breakthrough program—is posed by Sir Michael Bloomberg’s ongoing purchase of the entire Democratic Party. For several years “Mouseolini,” as the LaRouche movement has called this knighted London denizen, has been buying the party’s officials; now he is attempting to buy the Presidency by bringing down Donald Trump. If he succeeds, forget American industry and science, its space program; forget breaking up Wall Street banks which are now bringing on another financial collapse.

President Trump’s promise of a new economic infrastructure for America has gone unfilled; the Republican Party in Congress opposes it almost to a man and woman, while the Democrat float fake “negotiate infrastructure” ploys.

We have said, “Trump is a builder: Give him the tools.” The most important tools include a national bank for infrastructure and manufacturing credit; a restored Glass-Steagall Act to break up Wall Street; crash-program funding for his Moon-Mars mission. And the most important tools also include an emergency summit with President Vladimir Putin and President Xi Jinping; free the President to cooperate with them on peace and infrastructure-building worldwide.

But these tools are the Lyndon LaRouche’s policies, his “Four Laws.” Here is what Helga Zepp-LaRouche said Feb. 8 about her late husband at an internationally webcast Manhattan Town Hall, “Think Like Beethoven: The Key to Victory in 2020”:

“The fact that Lyn’s ideas are being denied to the American people, and to much of the world population, because of the unjust incarceration, because of the same apparatus which was behind the coup against Trump: I think that when President Trump said a few days ago, that one must guarantee that what happened to him, with Russiagate and with the coup attempt, must never happen again—well, there is one absolutely durable way how this will never happen again, and that is the exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche. Because, when that happens, it will become clear, that the apparatus of British infiltration of the U.S., of the idea to run the world as an empire based on the Anglo-American special relationship—which was put into place since Teddy Roosevelt, and which has been revived by many Presidents in the meantime—is finished: And that is the apparatus which tried to destroy the Presidency of President Trump.

“So, if my husband is exonerated, for the sake of the beauty of his ideas, then a durable freedom in the United States, with the United States returning to be a republic, will be absolutely possible.”

Her complete remarks and interchange with the audience are posted to LaRouchePAC’s website.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Trump’s NASA Request Monday Will Challenge Congress

Feb. 9 (EIRNS)—According to several media sources briefed by the White House, President Trump is going to challenge Congress Monday morning with a Fiscal Year 2021 budget proposal which includes a 12% increase in the NASA budget, from $22.6 billion (FY2021 estimated, still to be finally appropriated by Congress) to $26.3 billion.

According to Wall Street Journal sources, this means that the White House will request $3.3 billion more for human (specifically lunar) exploration, with about $3 billion more for the lunar lander development alone (in FY2020 NASA requested $1.2 billion for the lander). Moreover, it will do this without requesting cuts in space science programs, on the principle stated by Administrator Jim Bridenstine that such “shifting money” to human exploration does not work politically or in terms of science and technology.

When Trump entered office the NASA budget had been stuck at roughly $18 billion for a number of years; so he is seeking to raise it by 45% during his first term. Congress was pushed to make increases in his first three years, but the Democrats dug in on rejecting the President’s 2024 goal to land the first woman and next man on the Moon, and many have continued to promote a basically flat NASA budget until later this decade. Rep. Kendra Horn (D-OK)—who had at one time managed government affairs for the Space Foundation, and whom the Democratic House Caucus made chair of the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee of the House Science Committee in her very first year in Congress—advanced an authorization bill which does just that, puts off even a lunar crewed orbit to 2028, and rules against development of lunar resources or creation of a settlement of human industry there.

The increase the President is now proposing is, in fact, very small compared to increases in some other agencies this year, especially in military expenditures.

Moreover, the level he is requesting is not a ceiling but a floor for FY2021, because even with it, the funding for the Moon-Mars mission will have to increase sharply again after that year in order to keep the goal in sight for humans to land on the Moon in 2024, and develop a settlement by 2028.

The Journal quoted a White House spokesman saying, “Space exploration will reinvigorate the landscape of American science,” and eventually will result in a human mission to Mars.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Pompeo Warns U.S. Governors, Cut Your Ties with China

Feb. 9 (EIRNS)—In a keynote speech on Feb. 8 at the National Governors’ Association (NGA) annual conference, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo virtually ordered state officials from across the United States to stop pursuing, and cut off, any contacts with the Chinese-American Friendship Society, the Confucius Institutes, Chinese investors in their states, Chinese companies, etc.

Speaking peremptorily as he often does, Pompeo instructed the governors that “China is watching you, working you,” and that the State Department has the documents by which China is “ranking” them as open and friendly, or not. This was equivalent to saying, “We are watching you,” we know what you’ve done and we want no friendly interchanges by you with China. It will be remembered how disgraced FBI Director James Comey threatened President Donald Trump in a transition meeting on Jan. 6, 2017, by telling the President “there is a dossier” (by MI6’s Christopher Steele) and it says dangerous things about you, and we (the intelligence agencies) have it and might cause it to be published. Pompeo’s warning seemed intended to have the same effect.

He told the governors, “not to make separate individual deals with China that could undermine national policy. And, in fact, whether you are viewed by the [Communist Party of China] as friendly or hardline, know that it’s working you, know that it’s working the team around you. Competition with China is happening inside of your state, and it affects our capacity to perform America’s vital national security functions.” Could the Secretary of State and former CIA Director have been more explicit?

This was the sole subject of Pompeo’s NGA speech. In one rushed sentence, he acknowledged again that the United States had given aid and pledges of support to China in its fight against the coronavirus epidemic. His repeatedly bringing this up in recent days indicates President Trump’s pressure against Pompeo’s intense hostility to China; but firing him would be more effective in freeing up the President’s policy.

January Jobs Report Has a Shock—Did Trump Know Something?

Feb. 7 (EIRNS)—The January Labor Department employment report may carry a happy number at the top (225,000 increase in employment in January—adjusted, and adjusted…), but the report is a shock. This was indicated in the Labor Department’s “look back” at the 2nd quarter of 2019, published Feb. 3, and the Federal Reserve’s latest JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey). Today (as every January), the January monthly report includes the annual revisions to the so-called “jobs-birth/jobs-death ratio” which is one of the main “adjustments” the BLS uses. That ratio is what the second-quarter “look back” was about, and it indicated only 200,000 new jobs were really created in that quarter, or 67,000/month. The revision for January-December 2019 shows that instead of the 2.22 million new jobs BLS had reported for that entire year, it now estimates only 1.80 million were created, 422,000 less. This is still at about the “labor force replacement level” of 150-160,000 new jobs/month, but it points among other things to manufacturing job losses having begun early in 2019 and continued.

For the month of January 2020, BLS reports a loss of 12,000 more manufacturing jobs, although it also reported a gain of 44,000 construction jobs.

While the “headline” unemployment rate from BLS rose only from 3.5% to 3.6% in January, the more complete “real unemployment” rate computed by New York businessman Leo Hindery for many years, jumped in January from 6.7% to 7.0% because of a big increase in forced part-time work, which is part of his “real unemployment” count. If one adds the 3.5 million eligible workers not seeking work for more than a year, one gets a “potential” unemployment rate of 8.9%.

The picture of wages also did not improve. BLS reported average weekly wages in January were up just 2.5% from a year earlier. While the useless consumer price index would call this a small real wage gain, consider that rent has been increasing at an average rate of 5.5%/year for a decade, home prices by 6% in recent years, health insurance premiums by 8-10%/year, etc.

The question could be raised, whether President Donald Trump had some knowledge of this much-subdued 2019 growth, especially in manufacturing, when he blasted the Fed for raising rates through 2018 and then slowly lowering them in 2019. The ideal situation would have been to have two interest-rate tiers, keeping the rate for commercial andindustrial lending very low. The only way to do that currently, is to re-enact Glass-Steagall. Any borrowing to create or invest in speculative vehicles—suddenly not backed by Federally-insured deposits and being divested by banks under the law—would then require a much higher interest rate than normal bank lending.

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

‘Minsky Moment’ Caused by Speculators, Not Energy Producers

Feb. 9 (EIRNS)—Lance Roberts, an investment advisor for RIA Advisors in Houston, writing on RIA Real Investment Advice’s website Feb. 7 (and reposted to Zero Hero), uses research from The Cost of Capitalism: Understanding Market Mayhem and Stabilizing our Economic Future, a 2009 book by Johns Hopkins Economics Professor Dr. Robert Barbera, to clarify the “Minsky moment” of financial crash in asset values, now much discussed as being in the near future.

The Sir Michael Bloomberg-Mark Carney British Malthusian network of bankers and financial “experts” want you to believe it will be caused by collapse in the value of overvalued fossil fuel reserves, which they will make worthless by financial and propaganda warfare against investments in or use of those reserves.

But Roberts points out that Hyman Minsky was maintaining that price inflation/overvaluation of productive inputs—including of the wages of labor—do not cause “Minsky moments”; rather “during periods of bullish speculation, if they last long enough, the excesses generated by reckless, speculative, activity will eventually lead to a crisis. Of course, the longer the speculation occurs, the more severe the crisis will be.” That speculation, he states, is marked by very rapid rises in levels of debt in financial activity, particularly various forms of margin or “leveraging” debt, for which he adduces some charts.

Then comes this citation from The Cost of Capitalism, about the pace of five major financial collapses since 1991 (actually six in 25 years, had he added the 1987 stock markets crash). “The last five major global cyclical events were the early 1990s recession—largely occasioned by the U.S. Savings & Loan crisis—the collapse of Japan Inc. after the stock market crash of 1990, the Asian crisis of the mid-1990s, the fabulous technology boom/bust cycle at the turn of the millennium and the unprecedented rise and then collapse for U.S. residential real estate in 2007-2008.

“All five episodes delivered recessions, either global or regional. In no case was there a significant prior acceleration of wages and general prices. In each case, an investment boom and an associated asset market ran to improbable heights and then collapsed. From 1945 to 1985 there was no recession caused by the instability of investment prompted by financial speculation—and since 1985 there has been no recession that has not been caused by these factors.” (Emphasis in original.)

The effect of Glass-Steagall and Bretton Woods, and then of their abandonment, is clearly seen here.

It is precisely massive additional debt leverage—late in an already long post-Glass-Steagall speculative “cycle” as Roberts called it—which the Federal Reserve has been adding by jumping its balance sheet up by nearly $500 billion in five months and providing a nightly liquidity “topper” of 10 or more to the entire $1 trillion overnight interbank lending market.

Germany’s Dairy Farmers Give Milk to Poor, Rather than Take Low Prices from Cartel Processor

Feb. 7 (EIRNS)—Deutsche Milchkontor (DMK Group), a leading dairy conglomerate in Germany and provider of processed dairy products for cartel food warehouses, has responded to farmers’ demands that they receive more money (at the “farmgate”) for the milk they produce and deliver, with arguments against farmer demands. DMK asserts what amounts to attempted blackmail. The firm declares that they could no longer deliver milk to the food warehouses if it is in a way to imply that consumer prices will be higher, because they cannot do that to their purchasing customers.

On Feb. 3, Chancellor Angela Merkel met with farm representatives, and gave indication of support for the dairy farmers’ demands, in principle. But no action.

In response, farmer networks this week retaliated by staging various actions to publicize the impossible situation farmers face. In Dülmen, North Rhine-Westphalia, farmers responded promptly to the DMK stance, by buying up dairy products worth €1,500 in local warehouses, and announcing that they would distribute the dairy foods to food banks and soup kitchens for the poor.

Since they are denied parity prices for the milk they produce, farmers feel solidarity with the poor, who are treated badly as well. While DMK pays propagandistic lip service to honoring their purchasing clients, DMK has no scruples whatever about armtwisting farmers into selling their milk to it for ridiculously low prices. With the concentration of processors, farmers have next to no market other than DMK.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Macron Insists, There Is No Strategic Stability without Dialogue with Russia

Feb. 8 (EIRNS)—French President Emmanuel Macron delivered an address at the War College (Ecole de Guerre) in Paris on Feb. 7, in which he argued that dialogue with Russia was a necessary component of enhancing strategic stability in the world. At the outset Macron said that he was the first President to visit the Ecole de Guerre since 1959, when Charles de Gaulle announced the formation of France’s “force de frappe,” its nuclear weapons force. The world is a very different place now, than it was in de Gaulle’s time, said Macron. After describing the paradigm shifts that are challenging the “multilateral world order,” Macron laid out a clearly post-Brexit vision of the European role in strategic stability, with a heavy focus on arms control and European relations with Russia.

Macron asserted that strategic stability, today, is not guaranteed and cannot be achieved without a dialogue with Russia. “Europeans must first and foremost define together what their security interests are and sovereignly decide what is good for Europe,” he said. “Thus, there can be no defense and security project of European citizens without political vision seeking to advance gradual rebuilding of confidence with Russia.”

“I expect Russia to be a constructive player in our common security,” Macron continued. “But we cannot be satisfied with the current situation, in which the divide between us is growing and dialogue is weakening precisely at a time when the number of security issues that need to be addressed with Moscow are increasing.”

Macron said that the main objective of his engagement with Russia “is improvement in collective security and stability conditions in Europe…. It will require patience, and high demands, and it will be conducted with our European partners. But we have no interest in delegating such a dialogue to others, nor lock ourselves in the present situation.”

Macron called for Europe to propose, together, an international arms control agenda, to prevent “the possibility of a return of pure unhindered military and nuclear competition by 2021” in the aftermath of the collapse of the INF Treaty and the uncertain future of New START.

Philippines President Duterte Terminates the Visiting Forces Agreement with U.S.

Feb. 8 (EIRNS)—The U.S.-Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) is definitely being rescinded, with an official notification to the U.S., which will begin a 180-day period for the removal of U.S. troops and equipment. Something could still happen—such as President Donald Trump intervening to restore the visa to former national police chief (now Senator) Roland Dela Rosa, which was lifted by the State Department without explanation. Mike Pompeo’s State Department is full of Duterte-haters who oppose his war on drugs, which was run for several years by Dela Rosa.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana told ABS-CBN News on Feb. 7 of his exchange with the President, saying, “I asked for clarification and he said he is not changing his decision.”

Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin appeared to be opposing the cut-off, saying that the more than $550 million in security aid received from the U.S. since 2016, along with intelligence, training, and the ability to deter Chinese aggression were too important to lose. But Duterte has made up his mind.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

UN Security Council Emergency Meeting Becomes Scene of U.S. Attack on Russia in Syria

Feb. 7 (EIRNS)—At the behest of the United States, Britain and France, the UN Security Council held another “emergency” meeting on Syria yesterday, to discuss the situation in Idlib. It heard from both UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen and UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock. Together, Pedersen and Lowcock painted a picture of a humanitarian disaster in Idlib province resulting from the Syrian Army offensive. But beyond their description of the humanitarian situation in Idlib, the UN Security Council appears to have become a platform for the U.S. and its partners to attack Russia’s involvement in Syria, which characteristic was observed by the Russian side itself.

U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft delivered a bloodcurdling speech in which she accused the Syrian government, Russia, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah of pursuing “deliberate, lethal violence against thousands of innocent children, women, and men,” the only purpose of which is “terrorize and subdue.” The U.S. message, therefore, is that “The situation in northwest Syria demands an immediate, comprehensive, and verifiable ceasefire.” The Astana process of Russia, Iran, and Turkey, therefore, “cannot be trusted to deliver such a ceasefire” because “it is Russian warplanes that have routinely terminated Russian-brokered ‘ceasefires,’ ” she charged.

Russian UN permanent representative Vassily Nebenzia dismissed the U.S. accusations as hypocritical. “All special meetings have a somewhat familiar pattern,” Nebenzia said. “For some reason they are convened at the moment when terrorists in Syria are under threat, and the Syrian government reinstalls control over its national territory.” After detailing the activities of the Hayat Tahrir al Sham terrorists that control Idlib province, Nebenzia ridiculed those among Western states who regard HTS as “moderate opposition,” including “those officials who convened this meeting,” he said.

Nebenzia also reminded those who accuse Russia of barbarity, of how, in the name of fighting terrorism, the U.S. military turned the cities of Raqqa and Mosul into rubble. And yet never once did the UNSC convene an emergency meeting on the U.S.-led assaults on those cities. Similar stories, Nebenzia noted, come from Somalia and Afghanistan. “However, as long as no action is taken on those numerous incidents, and those who have let those incidents happen live being guided by an Orwell formula ‘all are equal before the law, but some are more equal than the others,’ any criticism addressed to Russia is a mere farce.”

Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari stressed that Syria won’t hesitate to carry out its sovereign right to liberate Idlib and every inch of the Syrian territory from the control of terrorist organizations, as was the case when liberating Homs, east Aleppo city, eastern Ghouta, just east of Damascus, and others areas.

FIGHT AGAINST DISEASE

American in Shenyang Blasts Anti-China Racism, Compares ‘A Look at U.S.A. 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu’

Feb. 8 (EIRNS)—Mario Cavolo, an Italian-American who has lived in Shenyang, China for 20 years, posted a blog on LinkedIn on Feb. 5 attacking the anti-China hysteria over the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV, now being called NCP for novel coronavirus pneumonia) which has gone viral, including being reprinted in China Daily. He starts by reporting on the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic which began in the U.S., writing, “it eventually infected 60 million and initially killed a minimum of 18,449 cases that year. But the final story of the H1N1 global pandemic was far worse than that, with close to 300,000 deaths, according to the final tallies in 2012 reported by the CDC.

“Which is why I am scratching my head at how bizarrely negative forces are attacking China and Chinese people as it engages a remarkably aggressive front addressing this coronavirus outbreak which started in Wuhan, central China. I am forced to ask and answer a few questions.

“During 2009 H1N1 outbreak, I don’t recall xenophobic anti-America attacks across the globe, do you? In fact, do you recall it took six months for the U.S. to declare a national emergency? Did any government from the onset in April 2009 through the end in April 2010, including the month of June, when H1N1 was declared an international emergency global pandemic, then send out a notice to its citizens that they should leave the United States? Close their borders to American travelers? Nope, not a peep.”

He acknowledges the danger of the highly contagious coronavirus, but concludes: “This vicious, political, xenophobic racist attack and smearing of all things China needs to stop.”

Worldwide Mobilization Needed To Produce Anti-Virus Materials and Equipment

Feb. 7 (EIRNS)—World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned today that the world faces “a chronic shortage” of the personal anti-viral protective equipment needed in an epidemic, such as masks and gloves. With the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), “we’re sending testing kits, masks, gloves, respirators and gowns to countries in every region,” but demand from all sides has created “a severe disruption in the market for personal protective equipment,” he said during today’s daily WHO briefing. Demand for these items is 200 times higher than normal, and prices have gone up by 20 times. Global stocks of masks and respirators, in particular, are insufficient to meet the needs of the WHO and its partners, he said, and the world faces a backlog of four to six months to secure them.

Dr. Tedros reported that he has spoken with the Pandemic Supply Chain Network to see how bottlenecks can be resolved fairly—that is, so that poor, vulnerable countries are adequately supplied—and he appealed for nations and people to limit use of now-scarce surgical masks to areas facing the infection, and that other areas not stockpile them.

Dr. Tedros’ appeal points to the urgency of convening a summit of the great power leaders, which on Jan. 6 Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and then on Jan. 15 Russian President Vladimir Putin, proposed in order to discuss how to secure a safe future for humanity. Rather than mobilizing to allocate scarce resources fairly, it is time to put the right to life of human beings first by mobilizing to gear up production internationally, immediately, of whatever basic materials are needed. The only way physical economy and basic science will be given precedence over speculators is in the framework of an agreement among such powers for a new international credit system.

Under those conditions, such efforts as the scientific forum the WHO is convening in Geneva for Feb. 11-12, to identify international research priorities, can really take off.

“Harnessing the power of science is critical for bringing this outbreak under control,” WHO’s Dr. Tedros said in announcing the forum. “There are questions we need answers to, and tools we need developed as quickly as possible.” Leading scientists, public health agencies, ministries of health, private and public agencies working on the coronavirus in areas ranging from animal and human health to the development of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics are invited. The forum is being organized in collaboration with the France-based Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness.

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