EIR Daily Alert Service, TUESDAY, February 18, 2020

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2020

Volume 7, Number 34

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

  • Whom the Gods Would Destroy….
  • WHO Director Tedros at Munich Makes Case To Globally Join With China in Coronavirus Fight
  • Chinese Government Adopts Measures To Help the Economy Get Back on Its Feet
  • Epidemiologist Warns Congress That U.S.-China Tensions Harm Collaboration on Coronavirus Epidemic
  • FAO Convenes Conference on Locusts, Now Entering Second Generation
  • Japan Mobilizes Against Domestic Outbreak of Coronavirus, Recognizes Asymptomatic Patients
  • LaRouche Warned in 1995, DOJ Permanent Bureaucracy Is a Hit Squad vs. Establishment’s Enemies
  • Smart Farmer Shows Sir Michael Bloomberg What the Economy Really Is, Stupid
  • Bloomberg Wants Death Panels To Cut Healthcare For the Elderly
  • YouTube Censors Rand Paul Senate Floor Speech on a ‘Chilling Day in America’
  • Zakharova Remarks That Sinophobia Has Replaced Russophobia at Munich Security Conference

EDITORIAL

Whom the Gods Would Destroy…

Feb. 17 (EIRNS)—Do not focus on any single aspect of the multiple crises facing mankind, Helga Zepp-LaRouche cautioned yesterday. That approach will lead you to a mistaken reading of what is going on in the world, and what to do about it. The question is: Why is the COVID-19 virus epidemic threatening to become a global pandemic if not contained? Why could the foiled impeachment drive against President Donald Trump become an even nastier overt coup d’état? Why might thelocust infestation sweeping the Horn of Africa become a full-fledged locust plague destroying the food supply of nations accounting for nearly 2 billion of the planet’s 7.6 billion people? Why is the current deconstruction of music and art on a trajectory of transforming mankind’s culture to that of a satanic sect? And why is all of this happening at the same time?

The answer, Zepp-LaRouche continued, is that “We are in an extraordinary turmoil and change of an historical period, where most people are absolutely not aware of how gigantic the transformation and collapse which is going on, actually is.” The so-called West is disintegrating, its trans-Atlantic financial system is in a breakdown crisis, and its governing Establishment centered in the City of London is prepared to impose dictatorship and fascist austerity to try to stay afloat. They have shown their utter inability to even consider why their liberal imperialist system is collapsing, nor entertain the possibility that it is their own policies that have led to the current disaster.

That incompetence was on full display at the just-concluded Munich Security Conference, which spokesmen for the ancien régime, such as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, tried to turn into a China-bashing circus—at exactly the moment that country is doing its utmost to contain the COVID-19 virus, for the benefit of the entire world.

The United States and Europe should be collaborating with China and Russia, not threatening and attacking them, Zepp-LaRouche insisted. A summit meeting of the Four Powers specified by Lyndon LaRouche—the U.S., China, Russia and India—must be organized for the immediate weeks ahead, to address the growing cascade of existential crises facing the planet, and solve them by putting the dying British Empire out of business and organizing a New Paradigm to replace it. That is a mission that can only be achieved by turning to the policies and method of Lyndon LaRouche, whose living legacy must for that reason be exonerated and mobilized.

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

WHO Director Tedros at Munich Makes Case To Globally Join with China in Coronavirus Fight

Feb. 17 (EIRNS)—World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus addressed the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 15, where he reported that the WHO was encouraged that there has not yet been widespread community transmission of the virus outside of China, although that danger still remains. He stressed, as he has on numerous occasions, that China is performing heroically: “The steps China has taken to contain the outbreak at its source appear to have bought the world time. But we don’t know how much time.”

Tedros further stated that the WHO is also encouraged that “the global research community has come together to identify and accelerate the most urgent research needs for diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines,” and that a team of international experts is now on the ground in China, working closely with Chinese counterparts to understand the outbreak, and to inform the next steps in the global response. He stressed that the WHO sent experts to China not because China lacks capacity, but to show solidarity and cooperation, Xinhua reported.

Tedros was also sharply critical of the campaign in some international circles to stigmatize and blame China for the outbreak.

“This is a time for facts, not fear. This is a time for rationality, not rumors. This is a time for solidarity, not stigma,” Tedros concluded.

The WHO website carries the full text of Dr. Tedros’ remarks.

Chinese Government Adopts Measures To Help the Economy Get Back on Its Feet

Feb. 17 (EIRNS)—There is a push underway in China to focus on getting the economy back on its feet, in order to reverse the marked economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 virus and the stringent quarantine and other measures taken to control it.

An editorial in yesterday’s Global Times reported that “on Feb. 14, almost 30% of the nation’s workforce returned to major cities after the extended holidays” of the Chinese New Year. “If proper preventive measures are taken,” the editorial continued, “resuming economic activities might not be as frightening as some have suggested. In fact, there has been no major infection reported so far at factories and businesses that resumed operations last week.”

That same day, the Shanghai Institute for International Studies (SIIS) issued a report, “China’s Fight against COVID-19 Epidemic: A Decisive Campaign,” and its authors were interviewed by Global Times. SIIS President Chen Dongxiao was cautiously optimistic, saying that Hubei remains the epicenter of the problem, but, “The rest of the country should be consolidating their achievements while continuing to support the epicenter. The vast majority of provinces excluding Hubei have witnessed a decline in newly confirmed cases for more than 10 consecutive days. As long as the trend is not reversed in the next one to two weeks, the inflection point of the epidemic will gradually appear in various regions.”

Secretary General for SIIS Research Center for International Cyberspace Governance Lu Chuanying stated that, outside of Hubei, the number of cases declined for the 11th consecutive day on Feb. 14. “It is highly likely this trend will continue next week,” said Lu. “Some provinces have even seen zero newly confirmed cases for several consecutive days.”

Associate Professor at SIIS Institute of Global Governance Liu Kan argued that “Major cities are the engines of the Chinese economy. Resuming economic activities as soon as possible in these cities—except for Wuhan—is important.”

None of this means that the government is relaxing its stringent quarantine and other policies. In fact, it was announced today that the government is “considering” postponing China’s “two sessions” annual sessions of the National People’s Congress and the National Political Consultative Conference, scheduled for March 3 and 5, in order to stay focused on combatting the virus. As Xinhua editorialized today, “China has entered the most crucial stage of fighting the novel coronavirus epidemic and must prevent any risks of rendering the previous sacrifices of the entire nation in vain.”

Global Times editorial emphasized the need to get the economy up and running. There has been an “unprecedented laser-focused campaign [that] China has waged against the epidemic—under which everything else was secondary, including the economy. However, we have already witnessed signs from top leaders that things will change. During two key meetings last week, the Standing Committee of the Central Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China and the State Council, leaders stressed the need to resume economic activities, while continuing the battle against the virus. Central government agencies have also followed up with fiscal and other concrete measures to help companies get back on their feet….

“The virus might cause further casualties, but the economy is directly linked to livelihoods of 1.4 billion people. China cannot afford to wait until COVID-19 is wiped out before it resumes business operations.”

Epidemiologist Warns Congress that U.S.-China Tensions Harm Collaboration on Coronavirus Epidemic

Feb. 17 (EIRNS)—Jennifer Bouey, senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and George Washington University professor, outlined to the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Asia subcommittee Feb. 5 hearing on the coronavirus, the great benefits which U.S.-China collaboration on developing China’s public health capabilities have made to the battle against global virus threats. Bouey warned, however, that the weakened collaboration on health matters between the two as a result of today’s increased tensions, has real consequences for fighting the current novel coronavirus epidemic.

When the SARS virus hit China in 2003, China had neither a national center for disease control nor a national case-reporting system, nor could any physician or journalist alert the public of any infectious outbreak before the Ministry of Health announced it, Bouey reported in her written testimony. Faced with its unpreparedness, China shook up its approach to domestic and global health. China’s Ministry of Health signed a multi-year partnership with the U.S. Health and Human Services Department in October 2003, to build up China’s public health infrastructure. Under the agreement, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Chinese National Influenza Center (CNIC) worked together in 2004 to develop China’s influenza technical expertise and surveillance capabilities, so that it could deal with the outbreak of the H5N1 avian flu virus.

When the H1N1 swine flu then hit Mexico and the United States in 2009, American and Chinese authorities shared information and technology to fight the virus, and China became the first country to mass-produce an H1N1 vaccine.

In 2010, China’s CNIC, which by then included 408 laboratories and 553 sentinel hospitals, was designated the fifth WHO Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Influenza. The CNIC began testing more than 20,000 influenza viruses annually and training other countries on influenza control.

In 2013, U.S.-China collaboration proved key in the outbreak of the highly-mortal H7N9 avian flu (with a 30% fatality rate) in China, and again in 2014, with the outbreak of the even more fatal Ebola epidemic in West Africa. U.S. and Chinese medical teams collaborated on the ground in Africa, and in 2015, held a U.S.-China Symposium on Ebola, Research, and Global Health Security, hosted by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

In the last three years of tensions, however, collaborative meetings have stalled; NIH and CDC staff based in Beijing have been reduced; the U.S. closed its National Science Foundation office in Beijing; China has enacted legislation restricting foreign NGO activities.

Bouey urged the Congress and administration to use the coronavirus crisis to turn this around. Rather than stigmas and punitive remarks, she proposed that the U.S. CDC work with China’s CDC and the China International Development Cooperation Agency, to map out potential collaboration on helping countries which do not have health care systems capable of stopping the spread of the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19.

FAO Convenes Conference on Locusts, Now Entering Second Generation

Feb. 17 (EIRNS)—The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has convened a meeting on the locust crisis, which will be held in Jordan for the entire week of Feb. 17-21. Announced last week, all affected countries have been invited, with the stated goal of “review[ing] the current situation with the aim of intensifying survey and control operations.” The FAO now has a Desert Locust Update page on their website, monitoring the expanding crisis.

Revealed in the latest FAO Update is that the pestilence is now about to enter into a second generation, with “breeding in progress throughout the Horn of Africa.” Countries including ground-zero of Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea are now reporting signs of egg laying, something also noted farther north, in Egypt; and in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and even Iran—to which it spread from Pakistan/India—and where “immature groups” of locusts have been spotted, already capable of forming small swarms.

A report in South China Morning Post gives an insight into the situation likely being repeated in other affected areas. Uganda is “scrambling” to respond to the outbreak, the paper says, as swarms entered the country over the weekend. Within hours, an “emergency government meeting” had been convened, with the military being immediately deployed to help with on-the-ground efforts.

FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu began a three-day tour of Pakistan on Feb. 15 meeting with President Arif Alvi before travelling to the Punjab region, where he pledged assistance, describing the situation as a “severe outbreak.” Along with Pakistan’s Federal Minister of National Food Security and Research Khusro Bakhtiar, the two endorsed the creation of a $500,000 Technical Cooperation Program “to make FAO’s technical expertise available to national experts,” according to FAO coverage.

Press coverage on India indicates that, while northern regions around Punjab sustained significant damage, on the whole the threat has receded, likely because of changing weather conditions. Reports the north India daily, Tribune, “The threat of locusts in Fazilka, Muktsar and Bathinda districts of Punjab, adjoining Rajasthan, is not over yet. The locusts may resurface, especially in the summer when there are dust storms and the weather is conducive for these insects, say agriculture experts.”

As the swarms approach the deserts of western China, Xinhua today quoted Zhang Zehua, a researcher at the Institute of Plant Protection of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, to the effect that China is likely safe—for now. According to Zhang, the “inland areas” of China are protected by the arid Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which forms a natural geographic barrier to their progress. However, if the overseas Desert Locust plague persists, the probability of locusts entering China in the summer will sharply increase. In the meantime, “China has formed a mature locust prevention and control response mechanism and has established a national four-tier locust-monitoring and early warning system,” writes Xinhua.

Japan Mobilizes against Domestic Outbreak of Coronavirus, Recognizes Asymptomatic Patients

Feb. 17 (EIRNS)—Japan Community Health Care Organization (a government agency) chief director Shigeru Omi reported in his press briefing today, that in virus testing everyone aboard the Princess Diamond cruise ship quarantined at Yokohama, regardless of their medical condition, it was found that 70% of those testing positive “are not showing any symptoms at all.”

Japanese officials are mobilizing. Health Minister Katsunobu Kato today urged the public to avoid crowds and non-essential gatherings, including packed commuter trains. The usual public celebration of the Emperor’s birthday planned for next Sunday, Feb. 23, has been cancelled, along with next month’s Tokyo marathon. No decision has been made at this time about the upcoming 2020 Summer Olympics scheduled for Tokyo.

Japan is “now in a new phase and must anticipate a spread of infections,” the Health Minister said in his Feb. 16 press conference. “Our priority is to build up the medical system so that people, especially those with pre-existing conditions, will not fall gravely ill and die.”

The first meeting of a task force on the virus was held at the Prime Minister’s office today. Takaji Wakita, chief of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, reported afterwards, “We agreed that the present situation represents the early stage of a domestic outbreak. This could progress further.”

Japan has confirmed 65 cases (not including those onboard the Princess Diamond), with a growing number of them involving people who have not visited China recently or who had knowingly had direct contact with people arriving from the country, according to a report in Britain’s Guardian.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

LaRouche Warned in 1995, DOJ Permanent Bureaucracy Is a Hit Squad vs. Establishment’s Enemies

Feb. 17 (EIRNS)—American patriot Lyndon LaRouche’s warnings to the “Hearings on Gross Misconduct of U.S. Department of Justice,” held Aug. 31-Sept. 1, 1995, in Tysons Corner, Virginia, on the out-of-control permanent bureaucracy in the Department of Justice, are 1,000% applicable today. It is out of the bowels of this permanent bureaucracy that crawled the 1,100 former DOJ officials who demanded for Attorney General William Barr’s resignation two days ago.

LaRouche testified to those 1995 hearings:

“We have an out-of-control Justice Department, in my view, where the rot is not in the appointees, as much as it is in the permanent bureaucracy. We have a permanent sickness, in the permanent bureaucracy of part of our government.

“In my case, when the time came that somebody wanted me out of the way, they were able to rely upon that permanent injustice in the permanent bureaucracy of government, to do the job. As in the Fruehmenschen case, the Weaver case, the Waco case, the case of Waldheim, the case of Demjanjuk, and other cases. Always there’s that agency inside the Justice Department, which works for a contract, like a hitman, when somebody with the right credentials and passwords walks in, and says, ‘We want to get this group of people,’ or ‘We want to get this person.’

“My case may be, as Ramsey Clark described it, the most extensive and the highest level of these cases, in terms of the duration and scope of the operation….

“So my case is important, in the sense that it’s more extensive, it’s more deep-going, long-going. But when it came to getting me, it was the same apparatus, that, I find, in my opinion, was used in these other cases. And until we remove, from our system of government, the rotten, permanent bureaucracy which acts like contract assassins, using the authority of the justice system to perpetrate assassination, this country is not free, nor anyone in it.”

Smart Farmer Shows Sir Michael Bloomberg What the Economy Really Is, Stupid

Feb. 17 (EIRNS)—Sir Michael Bloomberg’s 2016 remarks at the Distinguished Speaker Series of Oxford University’s Saïd Business School are making media headlines this week, because he insulted workers and farmers, in his typically oligarchical fashion.  Bloomberg, who thinks he knows something about economics (as apparently Oxford’s business school does, too), said: “The agrarian society lasted 3,000 years, and we could teach processes. I could teach anybody, even people in this room—no offense intended—to be a farmer. It’s a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.

“Then we had 300 years of the industrial society. You put the piece of metal on the lathe, you turn the crank in the direction of the arrow and you can have a job. And we created a lot of jobs. At one point, 98% of the world worked in agriculture, now it’s 2% in the United States.

“Now comes the information economy and the information economy is fundamentally different because it’s built around replacing people with technology and the skill sets that you have to learn are how to think and analyze, and that is a whole degree level different. You have to have a different skill set, you have to have a lot more gray matter. It’s not clear the teachers can teach or the students can learn, and so the challenge of society [is] of finding jobs for these people…. But the thing that is the most important, that will stop them from setting up a guillotine someday, is the dignity of a job”

EIR’s Bob Baker, a farmer by profession, countered Bloomberg’s lack an economic “skill-set,” today, responding how it is that 2% the American population that work in farming, are able to feed a nation of 320 million at a high level of nutrition, and have plenty left over to export to other nations.

Just planting corn, he said: “Today’s modern farmer may use a sophisticated, state-of-the-art corn planter, that can be 125 feet wide, that plants 50 rows of corn at the same time at a speed of 10 miles per hour, which can plant 1,000 acres per day [640 acres=1 sq. mile].

“The farmer can sit in his tractor cab, watching on three computer monitors, how the planter is putting in perfectly straight corn rows, using satellite GPS auto-steering. At the same time, the planter’s sensors send back to the monitors via Bluetooth, how many seeds are going into the ground. The farmer can increase or decrease the number of seeds going into the ground, based on the soil type and fertility, as the planter goes through the field, automatically, from data the farmer downloaded to his home office from the previous years, through digitized production data collected by his $500,000 corn harvester. The tractor and planter may cost $500,000 to $750,000.

“Bloomberg makes billions, as an oligarch Knight of the British Empire. The farmer may make zero, unless his wife has a part-time job.”

Bloomberg Wants Death Panels To Cut Healthcare for the Elderly

Feb. 17 (EIRNS)—This news service is conducting an in-depth investigation to see if there is any policy in which Sir Michael Bloomberg does not propound fascist ideas. So far, there is none.

In a video clip posted yesterday which has gone viral, Sir Mike Bloomberg coldly argues his Nazi view of forbidding medical treatment to lives deemed too expensive to live—the same philosophy on which Obamacare was premised, and for which Hitler’s doctors were condemned at Nuremberg:

“All of these costs keep going up. Nobody wants to pay any more money. And at the rate we’re going, healthcare is going to bankrupt us. So not only do we have a problem, we’ve got to sit here and say which things we’re going to do and which things we’re not. Nobody wants to do that. If you show up with prostate cancer and you’re 95 years old, we should say, go and enjoy, you’ve had a long life, there’s no cure and we can’t do anything. If you’re a young person, we should do something about it. Society’s not willing to do that, yet,” says Bloomberg.

Breitbart identified the video as from 2011, when Bloomberg joined a Jewish family that was sitting shiva in mourning their lost relative!

YouTube Censors Rand Paul Senate Floor Speech on a ‘Chilling Day in America’

Feb. 17 (EIRNS)—YouTube has removed the video of Sen. Rand Paul’s Feb. 4 statement on the floor of the Senate, in which he read the question he had submitted during the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump which Chief Justice Roberts had refused to read. Paul’s Senate speech was censored on the same pretext that Roberts had refused to read his question: He mentioned the name of the individual whose name cannot be said, but which everyone knows, without ever stating that the individuals is the whistleblower whose complaint was the pretext to launch the impeachment proceedings.

On Feb. 13, Senator Paul blasted YouTube’s decision to remove the video:

“It is a chilling and disturbing day in America when giant web companies such as YouTube decide to censor speech. Now, even protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Senate floor, can be blocked from getting to the American people.

“This is dangerous and politically biased. Apparently, YouTube has taken it upon itself to decide what questions can even be asked in the public debate, including on the Senate floor.”

The surveillance state has yet to complete its attempted censorship of Senator Paul’s question. It was widely reported at the time, and the video of his Senate floor statement is still available on C-Span.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Zakharova Remarks That Sinophobia Has Replaced Russophobia at Munich Security Conference

Feb. 17 (EIRNS)—Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova observed, during a Sunday talk show interview on Rossiya 1 yesterday, that this year’s Munich Security Conference largely gave up the anti-Russia bias—but replaced it with an anti-China bias instead.

“It might look surprising but saddening all the same, but this call [to stop the Russophobic bias at the conference] has been heeded. But, it seems to have been taken in a wrong way. Now the Munich conference demonstrates an openly anti-Chinese bias,” she said, reported TASS. She cited the fact that world leaders and representatives of government foreign policy institutions, as well as of international organizations, expressed raw anti-Chinese rhetoric during their speeches to the Munich Security Conference. Zakharova did not name U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or Defense Secretary Mark Esper, but no one could miss the direction of her reference. “They spoke about that country as a threat to entire humankind. They said that China’s policy is the threat of the 21st century. I have a feeling that we are witnessing, through the speeches delivered at the Munich conference in particular, the revival of new colonial approaches, as though the West no longer thinks it shameful to reincarnate the spirit of colonialism by means of dividing people, nations, and countries into those deserving sympathy and support … and those that can wait, those that need no sympathy and no support in times of trouble,” Zakharova remarked.

She recalled that China is countering the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic and is doing its best to prevent its spread to the rest of the human species.

“Don’t these people deserve to hear the words of support to this huge country and, I would dare say, great nation, from the leaders and heads of state at the Munich conference?” she demanded to know. “Not a single word was uttered. The Russian delegation drew attention to that. Regrettably, all the rest were absorbed with the so-called phenomenon of Ukraine,” she told Rossiya 1.

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