THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2020 Volume 7, Number 36 EIR Daily Alert Service P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390

• Trump vs. Bloomberg: Our Responsibility To Ensure the World Has Enough to Eat
• ‘Is Mike Pompeo Morally Fit To Be Secretary of State?’
• President Trump Brings Water to California
• State Department Moves to Hamper Freedom of Press Against Chinese Media in U.S.
• A Note Regarding Julian Assange
• Turkey’s Erdogan Threatens Military Operation in Idlib, Syria
• Aleppo, Syria Celebrates Victory Over Jihadi Terrorists
• Dutch Farmers Mobilize Defense Against EU-Canada CETA Trade Deal
• Spanish and Irish Farmers Protest Cartel Supermarkets and EU Free Trade Deals

EDITORIAL

Trump vs. Bloomberg: Our Responsibility To Ensure the World Has Enough To Eat

Feb. 19 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump is in California’s Central Valley, where more than half of the nation’s vegetables, fruit and nuts are produced by some of the world’s most advanced farmers, using the most sophisticated computerized technology, GPS mapping and guidance systems. This is not the mindless work described by the green fascist Sir Mike Bloomberg, who said farming is nothing more than, “you dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.” Any fool, he said, could be taught to farm.

Nonetheless, all that technology won’t produce food if there is no water. Trump is again fulfilling a campaign pledge, this time to assure water to the Valley, lifting certain restrictions placed on moving water from the river basins in the north to the south—a process severely restricted by fake science during the Obama Administration, which claimed that the salmon and the whales’ habitat must not be tampered with.

In 1988, LaRouche’s EIR founded an organization in Chicago called “Food for Peace,” described as an “international action group, pledged to battle world hunger.” Represented were 30 states, and 10 nations; the largest group of participants were farmers from all locations. The event was sparked by severe drought in the U.S. and Canadian grain producing regions, catastrophic floods in Bangladesh and China’s Yangtze Valley, and locust swarms in Africa. As EIR reported: “Diplomats from Sudan and Senegal reported to the conference on the state of emergency posed by locust swarms in northern Africa, and by the lack of food and devastating floods. Agil Elmanan, economic counselor of the embassy of Sudan in Washington, stressed that his nation could be the breadbasket of Africa but for the debt crisis, which has halted all infrastructure improvements. The needed Jonglei Canal sits 65% finished. It could control flood drainage and create enormous irrigation potential.”

But the “wise words of Lyndon LaRouche” and his associates were ignored by the Lords of the City of London and Wall Street. While China built the infrastructure required to stop the annual Yangtze floods, including the great Three Gorges Dam, the scientific research and infrastructure required elsewhere in the world was put on permanent hold, as a Malthusian psychosis was imposed on mankind by those same Lords. The Club of Rome, the World Wildlife Fund, and other genocidal institutions run by the world’s richest (including the British Royals) launched their evil plans, claiming that the only problem was “overpopulation,” and that to save the Earth and wildlife, industrial production and population growth must be stopped. When that wasn’t enough to brainwash everyone, the “anthropogenic global warming” myth was created, and the Lords again took charge—today, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and Wall Street guru Mike Bloomberg have served as the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action, insisting that both private and government banks must cut off credit to industries and power plants which have a “carbon footprint,” despite the millions of lives that will be lost as a result.

Look around the world today: The locust swarms are back in Africa, destroying tens of thousands of hectares of farmland in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia; the coronavirus is being contained in China, but if it spreads to Africa and other poor regions, it could become a pandemic; African swine fever has wiped out a quarter of the world’s pigs, especially in East and Southeast Asia.

Is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s current tour of Africa calling for all nations of the world to collaborate in building the infrastructure needed to prevent a biological holocaust? Quite the opposite. He is demanding that all ties to China be cut off, including participation in the historic Belt and Road Initiative, which is bringing Chinese infrastructure expertise to 160 nations around the world. China and Russia are the enemy, Pompeo preaches, like John Bolton before him, even while President Trump insists that we must be friends of both Russia and China.

It is time for Pompeo to end his reign of terror, to follow his pal John Bolton, to sink back into the swamp. A leaflet aimed at bringing about that desired end, freeing President Trump to act on his best impulses, was released today for mass distribution.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

‘Is Mike Pompeo Morally Fit To Be Secretary of State?’

Feb. 19 (EIRNS)—EIR sponsored the following statement which will be circulated internationally for mass distribution:

Though Donald Trump scored a decisive victory in his three-year war with the Anglo-American intelligence establishment by being acquitted in his impeachment trial on Feb. 5, there is no intention to allow him to depose the “War Party”—the permanent bureaucracy that actually runs Washington—from power. Everything will be done by London and Wall Street insiders to prevent Trump from soon meeting with Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in a three-way summit conference to end the danger of global war, and reject “climate change” as the pretext for reintroducing colonialism to Africa, Asia and the world at large. China, in particular, can be a natural partner with a United States whose President states that, “Our relationship with China, right now, has probably never been better. We went through a very rough patch, but it’s never, ever been better. My relationship with President Xi is an extraordinary one. He’s for China; I’m for the U.S. But other than that, we love each other.” In fact, the United States and China presently stand poised to shortly conclude one of the biggest trade deals in history—unless it’s disrupted from the inside.

So why, just one week after Trump’s acquittal, would Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ostensibly a Trump ally, and House Speaker Nancy “The Ripper” Pelosi, both featured speakers at the Feb. 13-15 Munich Security Conference in Europe, be found “reading from the same page” in a wild attack on China? Pelosi denounced President Xi Jinping for undermining American “democratic values, human rights, economic independence and national security.” Pompeo said, “China is increasingly trying to co-opt officials at the state and local level…. They’re trying to affect not only our federal level but our state and local officials as well.” The idea that China is “the biggest threat to the U.S.” is “pre-Nixon 1972” saber-rattling, which goes completely against what President Trump’s stated policy is. And traditional American policy, as expressed by the Franklin Roosevelt Presidency’s approach to China and Asia 75 years ago, is that there is no problem on this planet that cannot be solved, if the world’s most important countries work as allies. This is the vital message that a summit meeting, occurring perhaps as early as April-May’s 75th anniversary celebrations of the end of World War II, could deliver to a hopeful world.

Instead of acting on behalf of this approach, is Mike Pompeo playing a London-inspired “Great Game” of war and division, acting against the national interests of the United States? Pompeo’s State Department has appointed high-level officials like former State Department Director of Policy Planning Kiron Skinner, who said about China last April 29: “Not to make light of the Cold War, and the reality of nuclear war that could have happened—and the fact that we came close in some instances—but when we think about the Soviet Union and that competition, in a way it was a fight within the Western family. Karl Marx was a German Jew who developed a philosophy that was really within the larger body of political thought… that has some tenets even within classical liberalism…. That’s not really possible with China. This is a fight with a really different civilization, and a different ideology, and the United States hasn’t had that before.”

In response to a later question, Skinner stated, “it’s the first time that we will have a great-power competitor that is not Caucasian”—a statement that is not only racist, but also factually untrue, as anyone who can locate Pearl Harbor on a map or either remembers or has read about World War II knows.

– A Question for Mike Pompeo –

In early 2017 under President Trump’s direction, then-CIA Director Pompeo was told to meet with former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney, an expert on surveillance systems who subsequently informed Pompeo that there was absolutely no proof of a Russian hack. On the contrary, Binney had personally assembled evidence of an intentional insider leak.

Binney informed Pompeo that the entire idea of Russiagate was a fraud, yet Pompeo has to this day remained silent. The question is, Why? To this day, Bill Binney, who fully stands behind his 2017 assessment that the public account regarding the 2016 “Russia hack” is false, because the so-called “hack,” as described, was a physical impossibility, has not been given the courtesy of any response from Pompeo, positive or negative, despite his being tasked by the President to provide Pompeo with his expert assessment. Had Pompeo taken appropriate action, the coup against President Trump would have been shut down in November of 2017, if not earlier. Why did Pompeo not act then? What has been the cost to the nation of his failure to act? What was the collateral effect of perpetrating the “Russia hack” hoax on undermining the essential working security relationship that the United States needs to have with Russia in various regions of the world, such as Syria?

Right now, it is urgent for the President of the United States to, at the earliest possible moment, hold a summit conference with the presidents of China and Russia, and perhaps also of India, where President Trump will soon visit. A new, fair, financial architecture; a new set of defense agreements crafted around the mutual interests of all four nations; a possible joint “Four Powers” mission for the peaceful exploration of the Moon and Mars; the development of advanced high-density/high-yield energy technologies, emphasizing fourth generation nuclear fission and thermonuclear fusion research, rejecting the Malthusian premises of the “Green New Deal”—such discussion requires new thinking, different from that of “The Clash of Civilizations” concept that Mike Pompeo espoused at Munich.

Although the clash of civilizations is often mistakenly attributed to author Samuel P. Huntington, the idea actually came from the late British intelligence agent Bernard Lewis, of whom Mike Pompeo said May 20, 2018, “I owe a great deal of my understanding of the Middle East to his work.” Lewis was a central influence in advocating the Iraq invasion of 2003, which President Trump called the “single worst decision ever made.” Trump famously said in March of 2018, “That was Bush. Another real genius…. That turned out to be wonderful intelligence. Great intelligence agency there.”

A critical experiment can be done to find out exactly which nation Secretary Pompeo really serves. Will he finally give the President the answer that was requested? Will he allow patriot William Binney to tell this country the truth about the Russia hoax? Or will he continue to serve the interests of those that wish to loose the dogs of world war?

If so, he deserves no place in a Trump Presidency, nor in any other.

President Trump Brings Water to California

Feb. 19 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump’s visit today to the Central Valley of California, part of a three-day excursion to Nevada and California this week, is both a victory tour and a series of campaign events. He is speaking in Bakersfield today, mainly to farmers, and joining with members of Congress to review what the administration has already accomplished in improving the supply and delivery of water to farmers and others, and what more is to be done.

Trump visited Bakersfield during his campaign in 2016, and at the time promised that he would ensure that the farmers got the water they needed. California, at the time, was in the midst of the worst drought in its recorded history, and farmers were battling the state government and environmentalists for water. A three-inch bait fish, the Delta smelt, had headlines then, as water was sent out to San Francisco Bay rather than to the aqueducts and on to the farms and homes to the south.

The White House said that the President will “speak with hardworking farmers in the Central Valley about efforts to dramatically improve the supply and delivery of water in California and other Western states.”

The President is also expected to ceremoniously sign his administration’s reworking of environmental rules involving the pumping of Delta water.

Joining the President will be Congressman Kevin McCarthy to speak with farmers, just as the state may be in the first months of a new drought. With little precipitation in January and virtually none thus far in February, there remains but another six weeks of the normal rainy season to make up for this very dry winter. The press is filled with articles, asking if the state is now entering a new drought. That may be and we shall see in the next two months.

But there is no question that this administration is determined to streamline and accelerate both the approval of projects and regulations, and has done so with regard to the flow of water to the Delta and the pumps that send water south.

In 2014, two years before Trump was elected, California voters approved a ballot issue that provided for more than $3 billion to build new water infrastructure. Today, six years later, not one penny of that money has been allocated for such projects. The President has repeatedly challenged state leaders to get to work to ensure adequate water supplies are there for the nation’s most productive agricultural land; land that provides more than half of the nation’s vegetables, fruits and nuts. Perhaps the state’s leaders should learn a lesson from the President on how to streamline needed projects to get them done.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2021 budget proposal will fund multiple Sacramento District projects with several hundred million dollars in his plan for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civil works program. This is in addition to the more than $1 billion he provided in 2018.

State Department Moves To Hamper Freedom of Press against Chinese Media in U.S.

Feb. 19 (EIRNS)—The Department of State has utilized the Foreign Missions Act to muzzle the Chinese media covering news in the United States. They have now declared that Xinhua, CGTN, China Daily, China Radio International and People’s Daily must follow regulations meant for Foreign Missions. While most of these entities have been obliged to register under the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Act, which in itself places restrictions and mandates close monitoring of the entities’ activities, this is the State Department—i.e., Mike Pompeo—ratcheting up the pressure further. People working for these entities, even American citizens, must now submit their information to the State Department. And people coming or going from their posts are also subject to notification as is the case with Embassy personnel. Will this also restrict Chinese journalists from covering events, or attending briefings at the White House or the State Department?  A State Department official, speaking on background, said that journalists would not be restricted, but suspicions still remain that that may very well be the case.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang criticized the measure at his regular briefing today, stating, “We reserve the right to respond further to this matter.” And while it may not have been a response to these actions, the Foreign Ministry did announce that it was pulling the press credentials from the three Wall Street Journal journalists in Beijing to protest the Feb. 3 Journal op-ed by Walter Russell Mead, which criticized China’s response to COVID-19, and claimed the Chinese economy was about to explode. The Foreign Ministry asked Wall Street Journal to apologize for publishing Mead’s slander and to reprimand the individuals responsible for the article. As that didn’t happen, the Foreign Ministry is penalizing Wall Street Journal journalists in Beijing.

That “whited sepulcher” (as Matthew labels hypocrites) Mike Pompeo was quick to react with pompous outrage in a statement, saying, “The United States condemns China’s expulsion of three Wall Street Journal foreign correspondents. Mature, responsible countries understand that a free press reports facts and expresses opinions. The correct response is to present counter arguments, not restrict speech. The United States hopes that the Chinese people will enjoy the same access to accurate information and freedom of speech that Americans enjoy.”

A Note Regarding Julian Assange

Feb. 19 (EIRNS)—On Wednesday, Feb. 19, Britain’s Guardian and other media outlets involved in the coup against the President flogged a story based on statements made by Julian Assange’s lawyers to a London court in opposition to the pending extradition application for Assange by the United States. Those statements were to the effect that former Congressman Dana Rohrabacher had offered a pardon to Assange in 2017 on behalf of President Donald Trump if Assange stated that the Russians were not the source of the WikiLeaks trove of documents from the DNC and John Podesta.

These statements were immediately spun up into a conspiracy theory that Trump was offering pardons for Russian favors, by the media the Guardian regularly feeds.

Both the White House, and now, Dana Rohrabacher have denied the substance of the story. In a statement issued at 5:40 this afternoon, Rohrabacher said he never spoke to Trump about Assange, was not carrying any pardon authority by anyone, and that he met with Assange on his own. Rohrabacher says that upon his return, he told then Chief of Staff John Kelly that Assange had information to offer, if he was offered a pardon, but that absolutely no one ever spoke to him further about it. Rohrabacher ended his note by calling for a pardon for Assange and for the true story about the DNC and Podesta documents to be told. With that we wholeheartedly agree.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Turkey’s Erdogan Threatens Military Operation in Idlib, Syria

Feb. 19 (EIRNS)—Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to launch a military operation in Syria’s Idlib province if the Syrian army doesn’t return to the lines that existed at the time of the September 2018 Sochi de-escalation agreement between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Erdogan vowed, today, that launching an operation in Idlib is just “a matter of time.” Erdogan said that a series of meetings between Russian and Turkish diplomatic, military and intelligence officials on the situation in Idlib failed to produce results. “Although the meetings will continue, it is a reality that we were very far from what we want,” he said. “Turkey has made all preparations to carry out its own operation plans in Idlib.”

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced the possibility of a Turkish operation against the Syrian army in Idlib as the worst possible scenario. “If it will be an operation against terrorist forces in Idlib, that would certainly be within the spirit” of Russia’s agreements with Turkey, he said. “But if it is about an operation against legitimate Syrian armed forces, that would certainly be the worst-case scenario.”

Peskov observed that under the Sochi agreement, Turkey is supposed to use its clout among the armed groups to scale down and eventually halt attacks from within the province. The arrangement was taken as an alternative to a major military offensive by Damascus, which, Ankara said, would cause a major exodus of refugees from Syria to Turkey. In reality this didn’t happen, Peskov said. “We were satisfied with the agreements that were reached in Sochi over a year ago and the satisfaction was mutual. We were absolutely not satisfied after militants and terrorist groups started launching attacks from Idlib territory against the Syrian armed forces and Russian military sites,” he said. “That is when our satisfaction ended.” In other words, had Turkey disarmed and removed the militant groups from Idlib as it promised to do under the Sochi agreement, the Syrian army offensive would not have been necessary.

Aleppo, Syria Celebrates Victory over Jihadi Terrorists

Feb. 19 (EIRNS)—Residents of Aleppo are celebrating the victory of the Syrian army over the militants of Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) and other jihadi groups in western Aleppo province. According to a report in Al Masdar News, tens of thousands of people filled Saadallah Al-Jabri Square in downtown Aleppo city and were filmed waving Syrian flags and otherwise showing their support to the Syrian Arab Army. The SAA’s victory over the jihadis means the end of terrorist shelling on residential neighborhoods in the western side of the city.

Another sign of the victory has come in the reopening of Aleppo International Airport to commercial air traffic. The first commercial flight in eight years, a Syrian Airlines flight from Damascus, landed at the Aleppo airport, today. In video of the flight’s arrival at the terminal, a crowd of people can be seen greeting the airliner waving Syrian flags, and even the flight crew opened the cockpit windows to wave flags. “We are proud of this great victory through which the airport was reopened for air traffic,” said Syrian Transport Minister Engineer Ali Hammoud, who also stated that the airport used to transport more than 2 million passengers annually.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Dutch Farmers Mobilize Defense against EU-Canada CETA Trade Deal

Feb. 19 (EIRNS)—Organized by the Farmers Defense Force, several thousand took to the streets of The Hague today, many with tractors, and joined by German farmers from the border region. Officially, road blockades are not planned, nor is blockading the entrance to the parliament building, but yesterday’s vote in the House of Representatives to support the EU-Canada free trade agreement, CETA, provoked a strong reaction by farmers, who aim to mobilize the Senate to vote down the agreement. The vote in the House was close, 72-69, and the Senate, where the government does not have a majority, will debate the agreement next month.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) has been provisionally in force since 2017, but it must be ratified by all EU parliaments before entering into full effect. The deal eliminates almost all customs duties and increases quotas for certain key products in each other’s market. Opposition lawmakers expressed justified fears that CETA will erode food safety standards and expose Dutch farmers to unfair competition because their Canadian counterparts have lower animal welfare standards and lower costs. Fears were also voiced that a special dispute mechanism built into the pact could undermine national sovereignty and expose the government to claims from multinationals.

Protesting farmers are confident that the deal can still be blocked in the Senate, since forceful protests have also succeeded in having five Dutch provinces change policies on EU regulations on nitrogen use in agriculture.

Spanish and Irish Farmers Protest Cartel Supermarkets and EU Free Trade Deals

Feb. 19 (EIRNS)—Thousands of farmers caused road blockades and traffic jams yesterday in the two Spanish provinces of Extremadura and Andalusia, protesting against price dumping practices of the big food store chains, and against the EU free trade deals with countries that pose low-price competition to European farmers.

Prices that farmers receive for oranges, for instance, are maximally €20 cents per kilogram, which is below farmers’ production cost. These practices have eroded farming, with 700,000 jobs lost in Spain in 30 years. In large areas of Andalusia for instance, traditional family farms have been replaced by greenhouse conglomerates that reduce production costs by hiring cheap and partially even illegal laborers from North Africa—resembling the infamous maquiladoras of Mexico.

EU Commission plans to cut the Common Agricultural Program budget by 14%—ostensibly to compensate for the loss of the U.K. paying into the budget, have also ignited the ire of farmers in Ireland.  Irish Farmers Association (IFA) President Tim Cullinan said that the leaked proposal of European Council President Charles Michel would be a huge blow for Irish farmers. “This proposal contains a significant cut in the CAP budget and it would be a devastating blow for Irish farmers and rural Ireland and must be rejected,” he said. Farmers see a tragedy unfolding with these cuts and with the negative effects of the EU Commission’s plans to have free trade with Mercosur, Canada and the U.S., they also fear, as a letter to the editor of Agriland journal charged, that “rural Ireland will be back to the days of the landlords—inside 40 years. Is this all because farmers have been side-tracked to become production units and profit-centers for the likes of processors and supermarkets—the modern-day landlords?”

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